


The Dark Prodigal

by pulpklatura



Series: Regency Flarrow [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Regency, Angst with a Happy Ending, Class Issues, F/F, F/M, Forbidden Love, Friends to Lovers, Historical References, Interracial Relationship, Murder Mystery, Regency Romance, Some Humor, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-08 15:40:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 35
Words: 164,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4310913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pulpklatura/pseuds/pulpklatura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1812, and the infamous rakehell and scoundrel Lord Oliver Queene has returned to London to assume his father’s title as the Duke of Starling, following a five year disappearance prompted by a carriage accident in London. Society thinks it has its prodigal son back, but Oliver has a secret agenda of his own.</p><p>Premise: What if Arrow occurred not in 2012 but 1812? Primarily driven by Oliver's desire to solve and avenge his father's murder (the additional 'e' is intentional).</p><p>Published on fanfiction.net under B. Lleyn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prodigal

_Five years ago._

Oliver woke to the sound of loud pounding. As he opened his eyes, he winced at the sound – a rather all-too familiar symptom of a bad hangover following a night replete with sin and debauchery. His temples were throbbing. He dimly registered that he was not at home or at his club and his clothes were missing.

The door – for it was the door that was being literally pounded upon in fitting accompaniment for the sensation in his head – was flung open and in rushed his best friend. Breathing heavily, Viscount Thomas Merlyn's eyes were wild with fear and concern.

"Ollie, you must leave before they get here," he bent, presumably to retrieve discarded clothing from the ground while Oliver frowned in confusion, shifting his weight as he tried to roll to his side to better see his friend.

"Tommy?" he managed. His voice was hoarse. "I don't quite – "

Tommy approached the bed, flinging a shirt and breeches at Oliver. "Damn it, Oliver! We need to remove the sheets – they are evidence…" Trailing off, he began tugging at the corner of the bed.

Oliver forced himself to sit up. His head spun from the sudden movement and he was filled with a strong sense of bewilderment as he tried to figure out where he was and what had transpired before he awakened.

"Has…was someone here with me?"

"I thought she would be here with you given that the whole  _ton_ saw you both slip out of your own engagement ball!" snapped Tommy. His shock had given way to anger and his mouth was set in a hard line as he pulled the bed sheets out from under Oliver's body. There was a tell-tale red stain marring the pristine whiteness of the sheet and Oliver felt a stab of alarm.

"Did I –" he began.

"I don't bloody know but it's safe to say you have caused the greatest scandal of century by seducing your fiancée's sister on the very night of your betrothal!" Tommy turned to glare at him, dark eyes flashing. "What the devil were you thinking, Ollie? Never mind the goads that your rakehell reputation would suffer upon marrying – did you have to choose Laurel's sister to ruin to prove your damn self? I have stood by you all these years – hell, I have engaged in all manner of unsavoury activities with you but I don't know how we're going to deal with this at all."

Oliver pulled his breeches on gingerly, trying to process Tommy's words through the drunken haze of his mind. He barely remembered what had happened but his longtime friendship with Tommy told him that his friend spoke the truth. Yet a part of him was unwilling to accept what he had been told as it was.

"Tommy, what exactly happened?" he said slowly. His tongue felt heavy and forced an overly lugubrious edge to the way he enunciated.

"That is precisely the question I find myself asking you more often than not." A new voice entered the conversation, one that Oliver recognised as his father's.

Standing in the doorway, the duke's expression was one of upmost gravity, not without a strong measure of disappointment, the latter of which Robert Queene did not fail to inject in his tone as he addressed his son.

"Oliver, put your clothes on and come with me. Viscount Lance was riding fast just behind me and I do not wish to deal with him without hearing your side of the story, especially in light of the fact that his daughter is not in this room. Thomas, your loyalty is appreciated, but please leave the premises and hand those sheets to my man downstairs. This is a family matter."

There was naught to do but to defer to the Duke of Starling's instructions. Tommy left the room, shooting Oliver a desperate look of alarm as he descended the stairs. Oliver turned to face his father.

"I can explain," he said, not really meaning it.

"Yes, as always." His father had never been more ducal in his dismissal of Oliver's attempted explanation. He turned to leave the building – an inn, Oliver now identified.

Oliver hastily pulled on his shirt, scooped up his cravat and coat and followed suit.

They emerged into a foggy night with nary a sliver of moon to guide its inhabitants. Oliver dimly registered the gleam of the ducal seal on the family carriage as he clambered into it, sinking into the plush leather of its seats.

The Queene carriage was the sole means of conveyance on the dusty road outside the inn, a road that led southward and one that Oliver had spent many a wild night riding down when headed towards a debauchery or another in the outskirts of London. Had there been a party that evening? Why did he wake up in a coaching inn? And where was Sara, whom he inferred had been with him?

His thoughts dredged up the image of white sheets stained with blood. What had he done?

Having given directions to return to the family mansion on Grosvenor Square, his father entered the carriage and sat opposite his son, thinly veiled disapproval discernable in his expression and the way he held his cane at his side.

The carriage wheels began rolling towards Mayfair, meeting an occasional small bump in the uneven roads. The duke remained silent, and Oliver noted that his father's knuckles were clenched tight and white on the head of his cane. Daring not to look up into the duke's countenance without being addressed first, he casted futilely about in his mind for details of what had happened or for a plausible explanation with what little had been imputed to his agency earlier that night.

The silence was taut. Sensing the weight of his father's gaze and desperate to end the tension, Oliver raised his eyes from his hands to meet his father's expectant ones and hastily looked down again. He knew he was fidgeting, his fingers rubbing together in a childhood habit that emerged as a manifestation of his uneasiness. At the second bump that the wheels met with as they hurtled towards Mayfair, Oliver opened his mouth and met his father's eyes again.

"Father, I can explain."

"Indeed." Robert raised a single brow. "Explain away. Tell me how it is after you promised me to reign in your rakehell tendencies last week after I confronted you about the young woman who came into my study to tell me that you seduced her and left her with child, you manage to repeat the same sort of behaviour and this time choose an innocent to ruin. That matter has been dealt with – the woman did not want the child, but this time, Oliver, do explain to me how is it your bachelor activities extended to debauching a lady of the  _ton_  and your fiancée's sister, nonetheless."

Oliver winced. He did have nothing to explain – the events of which Tommy and his father were accusing him of were not at present anywhere in his memory. He recalled the wager made in the betting books at White's the night before his engagement ball: that his impending marriage to Miss Laurel Lance would tame the biggest hellion London had ever seen. He remembered having a drink too many before the ball – blasted brandy! – and staggering onto the ballroom to see a blonde masked woman with a wide smile.

 _Christ_. He could remember kissing the woman in the middle of the ballroom and pulling her away into a balcony, dropping her mask onto the ballroom floor at the same time.

"I see the impact of your actions has somewhat entered your inebriated mind." His father observed, his quiet anger still focused on Oliver.

"Laurel – What did Miss Lance see?"

Robert Queene, Duke of Starling paused. His choleric bent gave way to a somewhat defeated air. "The  _ton_  has seen enough to give Viscount Lance cause to challenge you to a duel. Suffice to say your marriage, though as of yet unannounced, might be taking place with a different Lance sister."

He let out an exasperated sigh, bringing his cane onto his knees as his thumb rubbed its carved head in a way not unlike Oliver's own disquieted fidgeting earlier. "Oliver."

The man addressed kept silent in recognition that his father was unfinished.

"Oliver." Robert said again, his attention to the top of his cane, which was a rich emerald that rather resembled an arrowhead, an allusion to the bow and arrow on the family crest. "Oliver Jonas Queene. You are my son, and…I know that there always has been something of wildness in our family. It's not in the nature of our Queene men to…fail to notice beauty. But there are lines we must observe as men, Oliver, and not just about how to act on this particular one of our urges."

He looked into his son's eyes, his own replete with agitation. Oliver had the impression his father's mind was no longer on the scandal tonight's debacle would cause, but on something far more compelling and acute.

"There are times, Oliver, when I want to tell you of more important things, when I tell myself that you are but twenty and despite being sent down from Oxford for your behaviour within one term and your consistent occupancy of the scandal sheets, that the person you are under all that will someday make me proud. There are times when I want to entrust you with knowledge – knowledge that only a responsible and capable man would be able to really inherit from our Starling legacy."

Oliver's brow furrowed. "Father, are you talking about the estate?"

The Duke of Starling's expression was one of incredulity, bordering on scorn. He opened his mouth to correct his son, but turned his head to the side sharply.

The carriage had ceased moving and the surrounding rhythm of noises one could expect of a city teeming with people was neither the shady trading of moonlighting citizens nor the merrymaking of the aristocracy. In fact the activity on either side of the streets surrounding the carriage could not be heard from within it.

"Father, is there something wrong?" Oliver began to pull on his coat.

Robert Queene raised a hand sharply, straining to hear around him. He started to get up from his seat, hand tightening around his cane in case he had to wield it defensively.

Then the carriage lurched violently to the side and Oliver felt a sharp pain in his side before losing consciousness.

 

* * *

 

_It is not often that biblical tableaux play out in the ton but it has not escaped anyone's attention that London's own prodigal Lord O________ Q_________ has returned! The missing heir to the duchy of S______________ and well-known rake was presented to his family yesterday afternoon after an absence lasting five years following the mysterious carriage accident wherein his father the Duke of S_____________ and Miss S_________ L__________ too disappeared. It is said that the previous duke perished in that accident. Much to this writer's chagrin, Lord O_____________'s exploits and the whereabouts of Lady S __________ L _________ during those five years remain presently unknown, but we must consider yet another important question: will the newly returned Lord O_________ maintain his previous unparalleled reputation as the Lord of Scoundrels?_

 

_London, 1812_

"I don't remember." Oliver made a small wistful smile. "There was something…just a fragment of a thought, that told me that I had to return to London because there was something waiting for me, even if I didn't know what it was and who I was then. And now I look upon both of you and know that it was always you."

At his words Thea opened her mouth, seemed to change her mind and threw her arms around him, while Moira, ever the proper duchess, smiled at both of them, the love in her eyes evident. "I am just grateful that you have returned to our family again."

From the corner of his eye, Oliver saw the family solicitor flush and clear his throat, embarrassed to be privy to such an intimate scene. "Your grace, I will return when the paperwork for his grace's return and the formal process for his assuming his father's title is complete."

His mother turned to regard the solicitor. "That will be acceptable." Casting a quick glance at the window, she continued, "Thea, we will still need to make our morning calls this afternoon, and in particular, pay a visit to the modiste."

Lady Thea Queene straightened. "Surely Ollie will need to visit a tailor as well – all his clothes are hopelessly outdated by now!"

"Your brother can see to his duties in due course – I will not be parading a duke around Mayfair when it is only my son who has returned as of now." His mother stood, gesturing for the tea tray to be cleared. "We will hold a ball in six weeks' time to reintroduce him to the  _ton_. Meanwhile we must make preparations."

Thea was delighted, her excitement evident from the way she clapped her hands in instinct at Moira's suggestion.

"We will have to have new dresses for the occasion!" she laughed. "Oh Ollie, you must make sure you visit the best tailor – get Tommy to bring you to his – the ball will be splendid! And how different you look," she paused to survey the changes his absence had wrought to his appearance.

Oliver waited patiently, knowing that his skin had been tanned a deeper brown than that of the young bucks she met in ballrooms and that his hair, while not as unkempt as it had been when he first arrived in England, was fair from fashionably cut. More ostensible was the muscle he had put on since she last saw him; Oliver had always been an avid rider and fencer before the incident but there was no hiding the way he filled out his coat and breeches now as he stood before his family.

Thea beamed, and there was no censure at all in her countenance or tone. "You will cut the most dashing figure in the ballroom," she declared with certainty, albeit also with a twinkle in her eyes, "and I will be the proudest sister in the world to know that the very tall, handsome and highly desirable, if somewhat hulking, man in the corner is my big brother. My value in the eyes of the  _ton_  will increase because of you."

"Thea," Moira chastened, though the twinkle in  _her_  eyes indicated her own enjoyment of the jest. "Ladies should not speak in such a manner!"

There was animated chatter about what ladies should, in fact, discuss as they left the drawing room. Oliver waited for silence to fall before he removed his father's ring from his last finger. Turning it over in his hand slowly, the smile he had practiced at length before he dared complete his plans for returning to London fell from his face.

They, too, believed his incredulous tale of how he had lost his memory partially upon the accident and then had been mistaken for an escaped prisoner from a nearby riot on a prison hull. The story was dashing indeed: Oliver was transported to the Caribbean and had only found his way back to London with great difficulty, guided with only the knowledge of his name and his nationality, and some scattered recollections of his lifestyle and skills that suggested he was a gentleman. Coupling that with a strong urge to go to London, Oliver was reunited with his family at last and legally speaking in time before he was declared dead.

It had been easy to fool the family solicitor; the man was not someone Oliver had been close to and while thorough in collecting the details of Oliver's return to London, could not be an accurate judge of when Oliver was lying. If his mother and sister believed him, then it was possible that Oliver would succeed in his mission.

He traced the worn edges of the family insignia of the ring he had pulled off his father's corpse, that generations of Queene men had worn and that he knew he had no right to wear in a world of justice.

"I will not fail you, father. I will avenge your death."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confused about that section where everything is in italics and Oliver's return is announced? That was a reproduction of a scandal sheet of that time, which typically does not name individuals beyond having initials (unless you're Lady Whistledown of the Bridgerton series by Julia Quinn). It should be noted that this work is very inspired by the Historical Romance genre and will adhere to its conventions where possible.
> 
> The term 'ton' refers to the aristocracy and the gentry (and of course royalty). 19th century Britain was incredibly class conscious and distinctions between good ton and bad ton could also be made.


	2. Weapon

The sound of mirth displayed at something good and innocent was an unfamiliar one. It occurring in his father's study was yet another unfamiliar event – Oliver had spent the last few weeks examining the contents of said study and cataloging what pieces of furniture had been changed.

"And you stole a horse? And called the poor beast Gambit?" Tommy fairly gasped for air as he struggled to contain his laughter. "By God, the human mind is a peculiar thing – that and this story vastly beats the one about how I nearly got sent down from Oxford the year after you yourself were."

"That is one story you must acquaint me with," Oliver said, taking a drink of brandy. "If my faulty memory does not serve me falsely, you're the only person who ever came remotely close to wrestling my title of reigning Lord of Sin and Vice from me."

Tommy coughed as he downed his own glass. "I beg your pardon; I always was the better scoundrel! How do you want to settle this – cards, drink or whores? I am warning you in advance, I have been assiduously cultivating my expertise in these areas in the years you've been away and shall defend my honour with ardour!"

"Shall it be swords or pistols at dawn?"

Both men burst out laughing and Tommy clapped a hand to Oliver's back. "It's good to have you back, Oliver. Raising hell…just wasn't the same without you and patchy memory or not I'd still have you by my side anytime. Here, one more drink and we'll end your exile officially at your welcome ball." He peered at the decanter and bottle and swore. "There isn't enough left – let me go get the good stuff." Tommy crossed the study and returned with another bottle.

"To your return?" He raised his glass.

Oliver raised his own glass. "And to my having my friend back again."

He had watched Tommy closely over the weeks and was fairly sure he knew no more than he had represented about the incident then. Tommy was innocent, a fact for which Oliver was grateful.

They toasted. As Oliver felt the last drops of his drink trickle down his throat he knew that Tommy was looking at him intently. He raised a brow in question.

"She's still unmarried, Oliver. And if you don't know what became of Sara then her whereabouts are still a mystery."

Oliver raised the corners of his lips into a weak smile that conveyed guilt. Some part of it was real – he owed Laurel everything for what he guessed had happened to her reputation and her prospects after the incident. It was the standard ending to an age-old story: the damage to a woman's prospects following a scandal inevitably resulted in shame-filled spinsterhood, or a quick and abominable alliance with the first man who would have her. He had ruined the girl who was his childhood companion.

A memory surfaced – Laurel, aged twelve, laughing as she signalled to Oliver to keep silent as she sneaked up behind Tommy to push him into the lake bordering their families' properties. A memory that he could no longer bring up without experiencing regret.

"I don't remember anything, except for what remains of our childhood summers," he lied. It was the only way he could stop himself from admitting that he cared. "Where is Laurel now?"

"After your…. There were proposals made to her, but she never accepted any of them. She lost darling status in the eyes of most of the  _ton_  and some doors were barred to her on account of Sara's scandal but she returned to London two years ago. Your mother threw her weight behind her."

"My mother has always been generous," Oliver replied.

Tommy set down his glass, a violent action most uncharacteristic of the friend Oliver knew. His eyes were flashing with anger. "Her Grace was just, Oliver. You ruined Sara, in the eyes of society, if not for real. And I have never spoken to anyone of the sheets I found that blasted night in that room – or the fact that Sara was not there when I arrived."

He broke off, letting out a small sigh. "I know your memory is still patchy, but whatever you can remember would give closure to the viscount and Laurel and possibly rehabilitate the Lances' reputation."

Oliver regarded Tommy gravely. What could he say? He remembered little of that evening save for what ensued after the carriage was attacked, a memory of blood and darkness that had ensnared his soul in its depths. He had prepared for a whole year before making his reappearance in London, but Sara's disappearance was not his responsibility.

 _Nor was it his secret to share_.

The burden of his thoughts had culminated in his increasing the pressure exerted by the hand holding his glass, and he felt his ring pressing into the calluses of his hand. He glanced at his signet ring. "We should go – to dally further would be taking our tradition of lateness when it comes to balls a bit too far."

"Late and drunk, my friend," Tommy straightened his coat and they headed to the ballroom. Moira had promised Oliver that the affair would be relatively private, but with a family as well-connected and powerful as the Queenes, it was inevitable that it was a crush in the Starling House ballroom.

Oliver stiffened slightly at the sight of the crowd: draped in velvets and satin and scent, the participants were there for the sole purpose of looking their fill of Lord Oliver Queene, rakehell and now returned prodigal son. And how Lord Oliver Queene would have delighted in being the centre of attention, stuffy ballroom aside.

"Viscount Thomas Merlyn," announced a footman. Oliver smiled slowly, schooling his features into that of the carefree and charming rake he was to play. "And Lord Oliver Queene, Marquess!"

The  _ton_  turned their eyes upon him, more than eager to discover how Marquess Queene had changed during his absence, but Oliver was ready with smiles and charm aplenty to support his story.

_Anything to find his father's killer among his guests._

"So you don't remember anything at all, Lord Queene?" Someone asked.

"Some people I unfortunately remember all too well, such as this miserable fellow here," he gestured at Tommy and gained his desired round of laughter. "In other instances I have impressions upon seeing people or places I used to be acquainted with, though sometimes I feel nothing at all."

"And how did you know to come back to your family? How did you even know who you are?"

"I knew my name and I felt an irresistible pull towards London. I now know that it is the love of my family that brought me back home." Not wholly a lie, as the best lies were, and it made Moira very happy, as evinced from her beaming smile.

"It's certainly wonderful having you back and I am sure the duchess is more than ecstatic, speaking as a fellow parent. What I'm really curious about is," Earl Merlyn's voice cut through the host of voices, "what do you remember of the night you disappeared?"

Oliver inclined his head towards Tommy's father, his jaw stiffening ever so slightly at the question. The earl had an intense gaze not successfully belied by his congenial countenance, and he employed it most ardently now as he continued, "I believe I speak for most of our present company in expressing a desire to know what became of your late, honourable father and the lovely Miss Sara."

There was a pregnant pause as the  _ton_ awaited Oliver's reply with bated breath. Oliver took a moment to ensure he retained his smile before answering. "I'm sorry to disappoint, Merlyn. I remember very little. Close to nothing following…following a large impact against the carriage we were riding in. I beg your pardon, my lady," he said to a nearby lady who had blanched at his description. The  _ton_  was rapt, and he felt his voice deepen as he said, "When I was away I had a feeling that I forgot something very important, that I had missed something of great significance and I tried very hard to remember what happened before the accident. I know now that I had forgotten my family, and that realisation has brought me much peace of late.

"As for the rest of that evening, I only remember waking on the ship in confusion and any effort to try to remember anything in those early days upon that ship only result in vicious headaches. My physician tells me that this is not uncommon of people who have undergone such experiences though, and from what I hear of what happened that night, it probably was a traumatic experience."

The edges of the earl's mouth lifted into a smile. " _Touché_."

"Indeed," Oliver managed before a flood of condolences followed. Tedium aside, the evening was going well: Oliver's story was accepted by all but the most skeptical, and even they did not dare to openly question his tale of amnesia and woe but merely restrained their disbelieving reactions to the slightest of movements like a raised brow. It was going as he had desired. If he was going to flush out his father's killer, it was imperative the  _ton_  believe that he was utterly harmless to all but their virginal daughters.

"Lord Queene. You are inheriting your father's title in a matter of weeks, once the Committee of Special Privileges officially declares you to be alive and the next Duke of Starling. Do you intend to step up to the responsibilities of the title?"

The question was asked by Walter Steel, a close family friend and possibly the richest man in London despite what his humility would indicate to an uninformed observer. He had been an advisor of sorts to Oliver's father and from what Oliver had gathered from Tommy and Thea, still close to the Queene family and instrumental in helping Moira manage the estate.

"Now, now," Oliver began, "I have been in talks with my family stewards and I am very aware of my responsibilities. My mother has had a manager oversee the estates the past five years and to be somewhat vulgar and talk of money, the Queene family is not going to see debtor's prison even if I lose all I have in my pockets on my visit to White's tonight." A ripple of laughter coursed through the crowd. "It is the double titles of Lord of Sin and Vice that have unfortunately left neglected over these years, and I assure you, the prodigal son has returned!"

The men laughed and the ladies smiled politely, though Oliver also received more than one inviting glance from many a merry widow at his proclamation. He was considering the impact an affair would have on his reputation and mission when he caught a glimpse of a woman wearing a deep mauve gown from the corner of his eye. Oliver looked up, and paused ever so slightly mid-sentence in yet another inane conversation his charade forced him to partake in this night.

There she was, looking at him with eyes a shade of green he knew by heart.

_Laurel._

 

* * *

 

Laurel froze. Ollie knew she was there. And he was walking slowly towards her, making his way through the crowd, to the corner she had occupied in her desire to watch the man she had both loved and loathed from afar.

It had been a mistake to come; she did not even have her own invitation but had shamelessly tagged along with a friend who did receive an invitation to the Queene ball. For how could the duchess desire to reunite her beloved son with the woman he had spurned so publicly by running away with her younger sister the night of their engagement ball? Much less when said younger sister may have died in the carriage accident that befell their means of transport?

But when she heard the news of Ollie's return she felt an irresistible urge to just look upon him, even if it was just for a moment, and relive the feelings that fueled her reason for living. As he approached her Laurel repeated the words that she told herself every day.  _You will never be weak for anyone else ever again._

"Miss Lance, isn't it? I think I remember you. May I have the next dance with a familiar face?"

He had said he suffered from memory loss. To think he had the nerve to forget her and what he had done, and then approach her like this in public! "I'm afraid not, my lord," she uttered softly, aware that the whole ballroom was straining its ears to hear their conversation. She spotted Tommy just a few yards away and lied, this time raising her voice. "I have promised the next dance to Viscount Merlyn and here he is to claim it."

With those words she curtseyed, walking to Tommy's side as the strains of a waltz began. Ever the gentleman and supportive friend, Tommy swept her into the familiar steps without any hesitation despite the fact that he had never asked for a dance that evening.

"Are you alright, Laurel?" he asked gently, looking intently into her eyes.

"Yes, of course I am," she snapped.

Tommy winced slightly, albeit not missing a beat in their waltz.

"Sorry." She managed a small smile. "I'm merely slightly shocked at seeing Oliver again after…"

Tommy understood. "Take your time, Laurel," he said, twirling her gracefully. "I don't know how much he remembers of who you are and of what you were to him, but I would venture to say he remembers that you are a very important person."

Laurel nearly snorted in disbelief, barring the fact that she was in a ballroom and waltzing with one of the most eligible gentlemen in the  _ton_. Tommy's hold on her tightened slightly in a ruse to get her attention. She knew he had read her mind – he always could – and he stressed in a low voice, "I would know that you're important if it was me in his shoes."

"You are not Oliver, Tommy," Laurel said. Her voice was steady and fierce to underscore her point. "And you should thank God that you will never be."

 

* * *

 

Oliver removed his cravat with a hand as he sat in the hack he had hired, returning to his home from a visit to White's with Tommy and a few other young bucks. He had yet to acquire a valet, despite being back in Starling House for two weeks, occasionally using the services of one of the footmen instead under the excuse that he was presently rather unaccustomed to having someone else help him dress.

The ball had rather confirmed his expectations – it would be difficult to find his father's killer by merely entering society alone. In the six weeks since he had access to the duchy's resources, he had put in a formal inquiry about the men that he had seen that night on the ship, as well as Sara Lance's whereabouts. Bow Street had found nothing he had not already discovered a year ago, via slightly more unorthodox methods.

He closed his eyes and tried to recall the details of the ship again, but a pair of green eyes intruded into his thoughts.

 _Of course she hates you._  What was he expecting, as he stalked over to Laurel, that she would welcome him back with open arms and proclaim her steadfast love for him despite his absence? He reached into his coat and clutched the locket that he had kept with him throughout the five years he had been away. In it was a painting of Laurel laughing, her expression and mirth caught perfectly by the artist. Sara had an incredible talent in painting portraits and this miniature was one of her best. Laurel had given it to him in the course of his courting her, laughing the exact same way as in the portrait as she said, "Here, since you can't seem to stop visiting Lance House with the excuse that you miss me."

 _You know what you've done and what you have to do._  Indeed. Lord Oliver Queene had hurt her but the present Oliver Queene was no better a man to even approach Miss Laurel Lance. Not when he had a vendetta and bore the scars of the five years he was away upon his body and soul.

He tensed, senses alert.

The surrounding streets were too quiet. The carriage slowed and Oliver sprung into action, yanking open the door and swinging himself into the driver's seat. The driver had released the reigns and pulled out a knife, casting a glance at the group of men dressed in black that waited ahead before thrusting it in Oliver's direction.

Oliver closed his hand over the driver's and stepped out of the way, surveying the incoming assailants. They looked like thugs, likely hired to either kill or question him.

"Come quietly an' we won't have to 'urt you," growled the driver.

The latter, then. He surveyed his surroundings – Hyde Park, far from residential areas and given the time of day it was likely no one was around. Turning back to his would be assailants, Oliver made a decision and exerted pressure on his driver's hand while catching hold of the reins to control the hack. He twisted the driver's hand back and discreetly drove the knife into his chest, and then jumped down from the hack as it came to a stop before the driver's armed accomplices.

"Who hired you?" Oliver demanded, dropping his voice to his most menacing tone.

"The pretty lord thinks 'e 'as the right to know!" jeered one of them.

Oliver dropped into a stance that readied him for combat. He could not risk having the men report to their employer of his skills and he only really needed to question one of them before that individual joined his compatriots in death as well as in crime.

He counted the men as he rolled his shoulders back slightly, considering who was likely to talk. It mattered that Oliver's questioning methods could be painful. The rude one it was then. Moving quickly, he struck the throat of the nearest thug and guided the man's blade towards the gut of his partner instead. The men were shocked – they had likely chalked the driver's death to pure chance and Oliver took his chance to relieve one thug of his weapon and send it into the neck of another.

Just two left, one of which was his intended interrogation partner and the other was fumbling with his coat pocket to retrieve what looked like a pistol, from the bulge marring the line of his coat. Not wishing to risk drawing attention with the sound of a pistol firing, Oliver charged towards the man and caught his head with his arms. There was the sound of a snap as the man's spine broke.

The rude one was now silent with fear, his knife shaking in his hand as he stared at Oliver. Oliver plucked the pistol from his last assailant's pocket and aimed it at the remaining man.

"I asked you a question. Who hired you?"

"Go to the devil!" The man had a choice between bravado and the truth and it seemed like the former was his decision. Oliver turned his head slightly at the sound of horses approaching. Attention had been drawn to the affray in Hyde Park and he would have little time to question his assailant properly without risking his mission. Oliver dropped the pistol and struck the man hard in the chest in a practiced move sufficient to stun soundly. He followed with a quick fatal strike to the temple and then ripped off his own cravat and fell to the ground. He was finishing the knots to bind his own hands before him as the unwelcome visitors to the commotion drew up their horses next to him.

"I say, it's Lord Queene!"

Oliver recognised the speaker and his compatriots, all of whom were good men of the  _ton_  and were probably returning from a ball before being drawn to the sound of a conflict in the park. He let out a groan.

"Help! Help me!"

Never say English gentlemen were unhelpful when their fellow man was at peril. A member of the party hastily untied him as he produced a story about how his driver had threatened him at knifepoint for money, with the help of his friends. His assailants had begun arguing among themselves about how to divide the desired ransom and Oliver had tried to escape before they broke out in fisticuffs.

"The carriages of London are perilous for the Queene family, it seems," a scornful voice commented.

Oliver raised his eyes to the speaker. Viscount Quentin Lance, father of both his erstwhile fiancée and the last woman of good  _ton_  he allegedly dallied with. He recalled belatedly from Tommy's efforts to reacquaint him with the  _ton_  that the viscount had cultivated a strong relationship with law enforcement causes in Oliver's absence and had ceased looking for his missing daughter, believing her dead.

Oliver supposed this was a conversation he eventually had to have and Viscount Lance's disdain was not undeserved. "Viscount, thank you for coming to my aid. I will have to prevail upon your good offices to make a speech to the effect of safety on the streets with regard to carriage travel in the House of Lords then."

"Don't count on it." Oliver technically outranked Quentin but you could never guess it from the contemptuous way the man stared him down. "Any member of your family will not receive assistance from mine in any way after what you've done. I could still call you out."

The viscount's strong words were going to go straight to the gossip rags tomorrow but he clearly did not care, eyes burning with anger. "Why was it you that returned from the dead?" The more important question was left unsaid.  _Where is my daughter?_  "What have you come back for?"

It was almost laughable that it would be Laurel's father that reminded Oliver of his mission. Oliver could not answer honestly at that point but his true response dominated his thoughts as he entered his rooms in Queene House.

 _You can avenge me,_  Robert had said, as he shielded his son from the blows of their tormentors five years ago aboard the Amazo, the ship that was to transport them and other prisoners to Australia before it had been caught in a storm.  _You can save them all and you must._

He began to pull together what he could remember of his father's charge to him in the days aboard the ship, an exercise he repeated time and again over the five years. He saw Robert's face imploring their tormentors to release Oliver and the cold weight of the signet ring Robert pressed into Oliver's palm in the few moments of respite from the rough treatment aboard the ship. He saw the way his father had been tortured before him, before their interrogators had threatened to transfer their attentions to Oliver should Robert fail to disclose where he had placed some documents.

 _It's in my work_ , Robert choked out to Oliver, the moment they were left alone.  _My legacy. You must retrace my steps and find the man_.

 _Who?_  Oliver had asked desperately, but Robert then gagged and vomited blood over the floor. He wiped his mouth and mouthed,  _my coat_ , before losing consciousness before his son.

He now fingered the remnants of his father's coat from five years ago – one of the few objects that he had brought back with him. It bore bloodstains and he had presented it to his mother to corroborate his story that his father had perished from the strain on the ship, much like Joseph's multicoloured coat was presented to Jacob.

The blood wasn't even Robert's.

Oliver had been systematic in his investigation thus far, amassing all the details of his father's life in London and looking into every single project that his father's name had been aligned with. Most curious was the purchase of a building on St James' Street, with plans marked with 'Foundry'.

In the one year he had to prepare for his return, he had conceived of what to do with the location. His father's correspondence regarding the building yielded little on Robert's intention for its exterior function was but extensive plans had been made for a series of secret tunnels and rooms for what would be Number 52 St James' Street. Oliver had made inquiries about the architects and builders and the general consensus was that the firm of Guggenheim, Kreisberg and Berlanti was recommended widely by the gaming hells and boudoirs across London. The firm was one known for upmost secrecy and quality – they never revealed the exact list of their clientele was and they kept no copies of any executed plans. In recognition that his activities would raise scrutiny of his family members and that his haphazard social calendar yielded little opportunities to truly observe the  _ton_ , Oliver had decided to base his operations there.

It took little contemplation to choose a gaming hell as its guise. Men's tongues grew loose and their true instincts were revealed whenever faced with the opportunity to satisfy their basest desires. He had taken on a false name – Arrow, a weapon found in the family seal and a reference to the days when the first Queene wielded a longbow alongside William the Conqueror – to establish the place. The Duke of Starling was the investor that his club would have on its face, as the  _ton_ would soon find out when it opened in a couple of weeks.

The Arrow was to strike fear into the hearts of guilty men, but Oliver needed to know whom to investigate first. He peeled back the lining of his father's coat and retrieved the little square of paper, now faded yellow with wear, he had found tucked into the seam. It was large enough to hold a message but it was blank, and Oliver had found similar blank squares in some of his father's wardrobe in the duke's bedroom.

His father's bedroom. After a ceremony in the House of Lords tomorrow it would be recognised as Oliver's bedroom, because Oliver would formally replace his father as the Duke of Starling, and all the while Oliver was not any near finding the culprit who murdered Robert Queene.

He put an end to the defeatist line of thinking he had embarked upon.

It was best, Oliver mused, to consider what he would do next. At present, this was trying to get some rest before dawn approached. Oliver made to remove his own clothing for the night and his hand closed around the locket.

It was necessary to forget Laurel. He owed her the world, he had adored her and he even remembered the first time he kissed her – they were sixteen and he had convinced her to accompany just him on a walk in the woods despite Tommy being in bed with a bad cold.

But he could not tell her of the darkness within him and the things he had done to get to where he was. He could not ask her to absolve the things he was going to do.

He stripped off his shirt and his breeches, closing his hand around a rough nightshirt. It was beneath the rank he bore to wear such things but he had not been able to wear fine clothes to sleep since he escaped. It was rather befitting. Lord Oliver Queene had died the night he boarded the Amazo, and in his place stood a dangerous, broken man with a single goal.

He moved to the fireplace and held the locket over the flames. It was necessary to forget any encumbrances that would betray his father's sacrifice. He was to be a weapon that existed solely to avenge his father and weapons did not have such residual feelings.

The Arrow could not have such feelings.

Oliver dropped the locket into the hearth, ignoring the sight of red flames rising higher as they devoured the portrait and burnt it to nothingness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Swords or pistols at dawn: a reference to the duel of honour process


	3. Variance

He closed his eyes.

The city of London appeared before him, every chartered street and every alcove condensed to a mere two grooves interweaved with other like lines in a tangled web of industry.

He traced the journey he had made five years ago before the Queene carriage was attacked and what followed after, mentally marking out all the details he could about the locale. The southern bank of the Thames was a miserable place, its saving grace only the fact that its scale of size was far dwarfed by that of the city on the northern bank. He thought of Redriff and Horseydown, of the stilted contraptions people lived in on Jacob's Island and the dank and dirt of the Mint.

 _No_. He had done this before, traversing that path over and over again, in his mind, with his person. There was nothing to be yielded in trying to understand why the dead coachman had gone through that cesspool when it offered the most direct way back into the heart of the city, short of skirting the borders of London before entering Mayfair. He had spent a whole year walking along those paths before he returned to Society, hoping desperately to see an explanatory pattern, something devious and genius beyond the filth and despair that plagued those quarters.

 _Another path then_. He considered the list of names that were recorded in his father's appointment book for the last year of his life, the people that his father had met. Save but a few had become members at Verdant, and dossiers of information on them had been painstakingly compiled, now sitting on the desk he used in his private room at his club.

The terms on which men were allowed to join Verdant were simple: a secret for membership. Another secret for extended credit. The  _ton_ was intrigued by its premise and seduced by the lavish opening night, where any man who had an invitation could enter and play to his heart's content, just for the space of that evening before they decided whether to become members.

He had read every single volume corresponding to these names thrice, their details now seared upon his mind from repetition.  _Still nothing_.

Robert Queene had been a responsible peer of the realm, active in his duties at the House of Lords and managing his land. He met with a number of people frequently, all respectable workingmen or fellow peers, for a number of natural reasons.

If there was a Robert Queene beyond the façade of the kindly father that wielded ducal authority, that man was a total enigma. Had Oliver not experienced the vicious threats made to his father on account of this alter ego, he would have laughed at the suggestion that his father had gone beyond the normal duties he held by birth and station.

It was enough to make a man consider donning a hooded cloak and breaking into homes in order to research people better. But for that he would still need a target.

The pieces of paper he had found sewn into his father's clothes was yet another dead-end. He had tracked down his father's old valet, who explained that it was an old Queene family tradition that Robert had asked him to comply with. The man then directed him to Schweitzer and Davidson – his father's tailors – "should the new duke desire to do the same with his Bath coating garments". Oliver had visited Cork Street, but was told that his father had provided the paper himself, and no one had any idea where the sheets came from.

Were the blank papers the culmination of dynastic superstition, or did they have a deeper meaning?

A knock on his study's door interrupted the reverie of his thoughts. It opened to reveal Moira's form, clothed in a tasteful walking gown.

"Your new valet has arrived."

Oliver frowned in confusion, before remembering that his mother had spoken of interviewing and hiring new staff two days ago.

"I do not need a valet."

"Well he's more than that," Moira pointed out. "Mr Diggle was a batman in the war and I have asked him to accompany you when you leave at night. I don't want a repeat of what happened the last time when you followed Tommy to White's. I understand if you don't want to take the carriage – don't think for a moment that I haven't been informed of how you always send our carriage back from your social engagements and return by horseback – but it is essential that you take someone with you to protect you."

Oliver leaned slightly to glance outside his study.

The man in question was standing solemnly with his hands held before him, his clothes barely disguising the bulk of his form and the quiet dignity he bore.  _John Diggle_ , Oliver thought. Yet another person to research and vet if Moira insisted he stay on, which was, based on the expression his mother was making, very likely.

He held back a sigh of exasperation. John Diggle would be one more person to evade as he tried to carry out his mission. Still, if it prevented his mother from asking awkward questions about his late nights and his memories of the past…

"Oliver, I've heard the most strange thing from my friends on my morning calls this week," she turned her eyes to the line of books populating the shelves. "There is word going about that you were involved with a pirate ship in the Caribbean. Imagine that – my son a pirate!"

Oliver chuckled dutifully. Moira had been fishing for information these few weeks, fuelled by her desire to spend more time with her returned son. Thea had confided that Moira had been more controlling of her children's whereabouts following his accident, and while Oliver did not blame her anxiety, it was getting tiring to play the son she wished to see and tide her concerns without curtailing his activities.

"Mother, if it makes you happy, I will take on Mr Diggle as my valet. Shall we call him into the room so I can apprise him of my schedule?"

Moira smiled, not missing that her son had not answered her question about his time away. Oliver had his reasons for not disclosing what happened to him in those five years and she respected that he could have little desire to relive those memories but she wanted to know more. Even if it was only to ensure that her boy had returned whole and safe. "By the way, Mr Steel informed me that he would indeed be joining us for dinner tonight and that he will be bringing the last of your father's files which he had been keeping while helping me with the estate. We'll dine  _en famille_ , of course."

"Indeed. Thank you, mother," Oliver said as she left.

He had ruled out Walter Steel as a culprit early on in his investigation. Astute as the man was about the financial market, Walter had not been given access to Robert's more secret plans, such as the blueprints for Verdant. Now the man only served to remind Oliver of the responsibilities he should be taking care of as the new duke.

Responsibilities such as the stack of accounting books collecting dust on Oliver's desk. Or the letters and invitations that too, were collecting dust next to them.

Oliver wondered why couldn't Moira's man of business have put off his marriage and stayed on in the job. He had yet to decide whether to hire his own; he would require a man competent with the estate but without the propensity to ask questions Oliver did not want answered, when money was moved about to fuel clandestine affairs.

In other words he required the mythological creature that was an intelligent man without curiousity. It was either that or reveal his mission to another person.

John Diggle entered the room, immediately making it seem small by virtue of his size. Oliver looked intently into the man's face. His mother sure knew how to pick them. Diggle's eyes were bright and intelligent; this was not a man more brute force than brain.

"I have read your qualifications for valeting, as well as of the bravery you displayed during the war."

Diggle had a track record that would have won even an ordinary man born to sheep farmers in Yorkshire a medal from the king. It was a pity that his skin colour barred any possibility of that.

"Thank you, your grace."

Oliver thought quickly. He needed to keep Diggle out of the way for his afternoon so he could find out more about him. "What do you know of sorting correspondence?"

"As a secretary?" Diggle sounded slightly surprised but he kept a tight rein on his emotions. "I know but the basics, that is, I helped the colonel with his mail but that task was very different from social correspondence."

Oliver waved a hand at the pile of unanswered mail at the corner of his desk. "I know you are employed as my valet and bodyguard but I will be visiting the tailor tomorrow for my sister has informed me that my current wardrobe barely suffices and needs to be replaced. Meanwhile I have need of a man of business. If you are willing, the harvest is bountiful, but the only worker thus far is somewhat distracted from beginning the task."

Diggle seemed to be a taciturn sort of fellow by nature. Recovering from his surprise, he resumed his grave manner. "I would be honoured, your grace." He moved to appropriate the letters. "May I assume you will be travelling to St James' Street tonight?"

The unspoken implication was that he would do the guarding aspect of his job and accompany Oliver as well. Oliver mentally cursed the interference this would cause to his plan to check the secret tunnels before opening for the evening. Lying would do no good given that the man had access to his closet and would know what Oliver had donned.

"Yes, you may, Mr Diggle. We will leave after dinner."

* * *

The ladies' meeting over tea was, as usual, more successful for trading gossip rather than ideas on how to improve the orphanage they were purportedly sponsoring. Laurel had accepted the absence of Lady Thea with understanding – the girl had been pelted with questions about her brother ever since news came of his return. In any case, Lady Thea's presence in the group had always been a gesture of goodwill from the Queene family: their way of apologising for what had happened with regard to her betrothal and Sara's absence.

A seventeen year old debutante surely had no more desire to lend her lack of expertise in scheduling meals for orphans than Laurel had at that age.

No, when Laurel was seventeen she had been setting her organisational capabilities to a wholly different sort of endeavour; namely, how to get Lord Oliver Queene to recognise that she was the love of his life. He had kissed her when she was sixteen, but then she heard that he also possibly more than kissed the barmaid at a nearby tavern a week after. When Ollie went to Oxford, she ignored all she heard about the wild drinking parties he and Tommy attended and instead read all the books he was supposed to be reading so that she could help him with his work at Christmas. She bought every fashionable pelisse, every improving book, cream, corset possible to make her the perfect Lady Laurel Queene, Duchess of Starling.

And she had succeeded: one day Ollie looked at her with eyes of desire rather than the mere affection she had as his childhood friend and he proposed to her the day after. Laurel had been beside herself with glee, admiring her emerald engagement ring several times a day and eagerly anticipating the day when she would be addressed as the Duchess of Starling.

But that day had not come, had it? Fate had a grim sense of humour: after weeks of courtship – during which Oliver had kissed her several more times – he then went and got himself wretchedly drunk at the celebratory ball for their engagement, and absconded with her unmarried sister the very same night.

When Laurel was seventeen, she was the biggest sort of fool in existence: of the lovesick variety. How she cried over Ollie and Sara's betrayal. In fact, she mused, the only thing that got her out of her depressive bouts was the rides around the unsavoury parts of London that Tommy dragged her on. It was during those rides that she built herself back together. Laurel Lance was a fighter, in possession of one of the finest organisational minds in London society, and to the plight of the wandering children around London she would apply herself.

With the close of the meeting, her butler had announced the arrival of a new visitor: a Viscount Merlyn. Laurel smiled as Tommy entered the drawing room.

"I see Miss Lance is happy today," he said upon seeing her face.

"A state sure to desist with the arrival of your person."

"Tch, you wound me," he placed a hand dramatically over his heart as he settled in the chair next to hers. "I burn, I pine, I perish."

"That quote was wholly taken out of context," Laurel observed.

"I know, that's why I never became my English teacher's pet in school," he grinned. "Whereas you, my dear Miss Lance, charmed all the governesses you ever had. If you had come to Eton with Ollie and me, our reputation as the largest scapegraces and scoundrels the institution had seen since its inception would have been tarnished by mere association with you."

"I would have told everyone of how you still keep the little toy horse your mother gave you on your sixth birthday next to your pillow every night."

Tommy made a face at Laurel in jovial response. That was who he was: always joking, always making her laugh. Viscount Thomas Merlyn may have been a rake who threatened the hearts of the women in the  _ton_  but with Laurel he was always her dear friend from childhood. "Have you responded to the baron?"

"Did you come here to ask me about my marital prospects?" she began to tease.

Tommy turned to her, all seriousness. "I came to see how you were, seeing how we never talked about the Starling ball."

Laurel set down the cup of tea she had been making for Tommy. "I don't want to talk about it, Tommy."

"Are you still angry at Oliver?"

She glared at him and her tone was clipped as she responded. "Tommy, the one thing I was most grateful of in the wake of the incident five years ago was that you never once asked me what I felt, or treated me as if you had to be extra careful not to upset me. Do not undo the goodwill that I have for you."

"Laurel." He looked at her intently. "It has been five years. I have never talked about it with you because I knew you were hurting, and when I thought you were over the incident I didn't want to open your wounds. But that evening in the Starling House ballroom I saw your pain the way I see you before me right now. And I need to know, Laurel, what do you feel about Oliver?"

She let out a huff of exasperation. "You asked about the baron…Tommy, do you think I have been rejecting all the offers for my hand over these years because of some misguided vestige of emotion I harbour for Ollie?" She felt really angry now, raising her voice. "Did Oliver put you up to this? I harbour nothing but anger for him, which as his best friend you are free to inform him of, because I am not afraid of the world knowing!" She broke off, taking a deep breath to steady herself. The temerity of Tommy – to imagine that she still loved Oliver! The girl that loved him was dead, having died in that carriage wreck or aboard the ship or whatever cock and bull story Oliver Queene had been telling the world about his absence.

"Laurel, I'm just concerned about you – the mere mention of Oliver fills you with so much emotion."

"Talk to my father then," she snapped. "If you want to discuss how the mention of London's favourite prodigal fills people with emotion. Or the many legions of women making cow eyes at him in the  _ton_. Where does this even come from? If anyone should be questioned about why they have yet to marry, it should be you – twenty-eight years of age and still yet to even court a girl properly for the love of the painted mistresses you parade up and down Mayfair because he is probably afraid of losing her the way he lost his mother."

With the last sentence she cried, she widened her eyes in alarm. Laurel knew she had gone too far in invoking the late Lady Merlyn.

Tommy's face showed his hurt, and more distressingly, his anger. In all her years of knowing him, he had never ever been angry at Laurel. Teasing, yes. Irritated if somewhat amused, yes. Never angry, or wounded as he appeared now.

"It appears," he said slowly, "that some of us were labouring under the misapprehension that one of us cared more than the person actually did."

"Tommy," Laurel began, but he cut her off.

"No matter, because I was about to see to some business and can put an end to this embarrassing façade. There is no need to see me out. I bid you good day, Miss Lance." He picked up his hat where it lay next to his untouched cup of tea.

She had made it with no milk and three sugars, the very way he had preferred his tea since he was seven. He strode to the door, turning to look at Laurel coldly before he left, his mouth twisted into an ugly expression of derision. "The fact that you asked where my questions were coming from and attributed them to Oliver is fully indicative of my error: I should never have bothered asking to begin with."

Laurel closed her eyes as the door swung shut. Tommy's sudden display of temper had perplexed and vexed her. It appeared that at twenty-four years of age she was still a fool, only of a different kind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Batman: the official term was soldier-servant, I believe, but I swear I didn't make it up - Bates in Downton Abbey was a batman in the Boer War and William was Matthew's batman in WWI. Only commissioned officers could have a batman and they were in charge of a variety of duties which included what we associate with a valet's job. The Wikipedia article had fun with this and points out that Alfred Pennyworth is Batman's batman.
> 
> The POTC reference was me having fun.
> 
> My source material for historical references to Regency London is Jerry White's London in the Nineteenth Century.


	4. Covered

The thing about being undercover was that one often did not get to choose one's guise.

John looked almost resentfully at the last of the letters he had to read. Valeting was a noble profession. Guarding someone made use of his natural talents. Sorting social correspondence of this nature was…

He never wanted to see a letter again, for the next few weeks at least.

It would have helped had any of the documents been remotely important. But the volley of notes was all exhortations of love and lust from widows and married women alike. It appeared that his new employer was a man that received more billet-doux than any reasonable person should ever have to read. And the way the notes were phrased! To wit: "I must confess a great yearning coming over me the likes of which this gentlewoman has never experienced, when I had the glorious experience of being introduced to your illustrious person." The coup de grace: each letter was individually scented such that as a whole they ranged such a wide variety of olfactory stimuli that a perfumer would have cried tears of joy.

John wanted to cry tears of pain.

Then again that was not exactly the mission the War Office had charged him with.

He put the pile of notes aside on the bedside table in his new room. The duchy of Starling was not ungenerous with its appointment of servants' quarters. As a valet he had the privilege of a private room, and free reign of the duke's rooms insofar he could justify his presence with a sartorial reason.

Rising from his seat on his bed, John unpacked the small valise he had brought with him with swift efficiency. It suited his habits in operations to begin as soon as he could.

His mission in Starling House was simple: to amass information on the new duke and ascertain his knowledge of his father's work for the country, as well as the details of his reappearance. There was a possibility that John would be asked to put him down discreetly if the duke posed a threat. But the War Office rarely issued such directives this early on in investigative missions.

He had seen little of his employer since their first meeting in the morning, but John had seen fit to inspect the duke's wardrobe and explore Starling House as part of his work.

Starling House was a prime example of Georgian architecture, a recent addition to London's buildings as were its companions in Mayfair. Built in the mid-18th century, its fenestrations and decorated cornice spoke of symmetrical elegance, designed to convey a sense of ordered grace. John had not discovered any irregularities in his first cursory survey of the house, which suggested that the past duke did not carry out any of his secret activities in Starling House itself.

Naturally, it remained to be seen whether the new duke was himself involved in any shady business.

John walked down the long corridor leading to the duke's room, his mind on the little information he had been briefed on before he had been sent on this mission.

The official account was that Lord Oliver Jonas Queene had returned to England only this spring, in time for the activities of this current Season. The War Office had reports of a man that looked remarkably like him roaming the bowels of London in a directed manner a whole year earlier, which directly contradicted the amnesiac rakehell reputation that Lord Queene had attained upon his reappearance. And then there was the news of his investing money in a gentlemen's club opened by a mysterious individual known as the Arrow, an entity that the War Office had yet to discover the identity of.

The War Office considered the new duke a possible threat to what they worked for. And so they sent an agent to watch him in public, and another to watch him in private.

Or, as John privately thought of his assignment, to babysit the duke in private. He hoped that his counterpart, whoever it was, had something more interesting to do.

The duke's wardrobe held nothing of particular interest, unless one had a passion for cuts and linings, although there was a curious collection of coarse night-clothes that appeared to belong to the duke. As he had expected, a haphazard pile of creased shirts and other accouterments, mildly reeking of smoke and alcohol, was strewn in a corner of the wardrobe.

John catalogued the lot with ease, looking for any tears or stains that needed his attention. Thus far the Duke of Starling seemed to be the average peer-about-town. He turned from the wardrobe and inspected the rest of the room.

The furnishings in the duke's bedroom bore close resemblance to the Rococo styles all the rage on the Continent, albeit with an Oriental flair evoked by the recurring motif of chinoiseries. If the simpler Georgian design of the house precluded the concealment of secrets, then perhaps it was the ornate curlicues of the woodwork that would yield Starling's confidences. John ran his fingers along the bed frame and that of the wardrobe, feeling for irregularities.

"Have the maids been slacking off?" a voice interrupted his search.

John slowly turned to face its owner.

* * *

Oliver slid into the empty seat, the ill-fitting coat he had wrapped round his body restricting his movements somewhat. He had spent the afternoon at his club, gambling and drinking with his father's contemporaries. It was a waste of time; he had no progress at all by getting them soused on his account.

Now he waited for the first act to end, the denunciation of the title character completed and suspense to descend on the more uncultured of the crowd who failed to inform themselves of the plot.

His companion was riveted on the action below, only occasionally shaking his head whenever he disagreed with a particular singer's interpretation of the music.

"I always thought you more of a ballet sort."

The man he addressed turned his attention away from the stage. "I only watch ballet in Russia."

"You can't return to Russia."

"Then opera it has to be," grinned Anatoli Knyazev. "What brings the Duke of Starling to this particular box?"

Oliver's hand closed round the sheet of paper in his breast pocket. "I need information."

"Anything for a brother," agreed Anatoli with good humour, his eyes on the performers below. "I recommend the actress playing Donna Anna, if you're looking for a mistress. I hear you've been terrorising aristocratic mamas ever since you've returned for your lack of being tied down. They live in a state of hope and horror."

Oliver frowned. "John Diggle," he managed. "Get your men to find out what you can about him."

Anatoli nodded. "Done."

There was a long silence before either men spoke. On stage, the tension that the singers had been building towards reached its peak, the soprano's eyes filling with tears as she trilled out the emotive last notes of her aria.

"There is something else," Oliver admitted. He pulled out the sheet of paper, blank as newly fallen snow, and handed it to the Russian. "I found this sewn into some garments."

Anatoli chuckled. "Ah the old Chinese curse…"

"I beg your pardon?"

Anatoli flicked a glance at Oliver. " _Yób tvoyú mat'_! You even speak like an English lordling now. I thought you had it beaten out of you ages ago."

Oliver shot him a long-suffering look.

"Still no sense of humour, I see," Anatoli shook his head. "It's a practice from the Orient. Not actually Chinese, I think… The superstitious sew talismans into their victim's clothes."

"This sheet of paper has nothing on it," said Oliver. What Anatoli said did not make sense. Why would Robert have sewn curses into his own clothes?

"You need a spark to make smoke, my friend," Anatoli replied.

"I have applied heat."

Anatoli lifted the paper to his nose. "This was written with sympathetic inks. I'll send a list of possibilities for its counterpart to your abode."

Oliver's lips lifted in a half-smile as he took the paper back from his friend and rose to his feet. "Thank you."

In response Anatoli straightened abruptly in his seat, focused on the dramatic revelation ensuing on stage. "No no no…" he muttered, in his native tongue, "the accents on that line were all wrong…"

Oliver shed the coat as he stepped out of the box. It would not have raised any questions should the Duke of Starling be seen at the opera, but appearing in a specific box known to be frequented by the exiled Russian was another thing altogether. He slipped past the other boxes, Anatoli's observation ringing in his head.

It was indeed beginning to be remarked upon, how he had yet to take a mistress or be seen in the company of any woman. That was not what a rake did.

 _Helena Bertinelli_. That was the name of the woman Anatoli spoke of – a Greek woman of great talent in her craft. Her dark hair and full mouth came to mind.  _She would be an attractive distraction, at the very least._

The congested air of the city greeted him as he emerged from the opera house, filled with remnants of the day's industry. As he approached his stallion, the figure of another rider approached.

"Good evening, your grace," John Diggle inclined his head.

Oliver swung himself into his saddle, a fluid motion that brought him at a more level height with his valet. "How did you know where to find me?" He had avoided returning to Starling House for dinner for the very purpose to give the man the slip.

"Not many men of your ilk traverse the streets of London on horseback, your grace. May I know if you desire to go to Verdant?"

That was no answer. Oliver mentally reminded himself to be more vigilant around the man. "Let's go," was all he said.

Verdant was situated at the end of the male enclave, near King Street, which lent itself well to indulging of vices, being a stone's throw from the lower hells and the bordellos that were frequented by his fellow peers. Oliver had yet to decide if he would directly employ girls for his establishment or continue the arrangement he had made with a nearby brothel. He rather thought the less staff he had wandering the hallways of his den, the better.

"I met the housekeeper earlier," said Diggle.

"Mrs Raisa?"

"I have given her the coarse nightclothes and sent a note to the tailor."

Damn. This was partly the reason why Oliver did not want a valet. He was probably going to have to sleep nude until he could get more suitable nightclothes.

They rode through the smog of the city, arriving at St James' Street in time to witness the beginning of the night's revelries.

Dismounting, Oliver motioned to the stable boy he had purloined from his own house to take care of his horse and entered Verdant via the main door. His staff had already opened it to visiting members, who had to prove their identity with a password before being allowed to wander at will in the gaming rooms. At his arrival, one of his henchmen came to whisper a message in his ear.

Nodding, Oliver made for the gambling room as opposed to the owner's private suite like he had planned to initially.

Diggle followed closely after him as they weaved through the crush, Oliver meeting and greeting where appropriate. They found Tommy slumped at the roulette table, his counters steadily diminishing before him as he cradled his forehead with one hand and a glass of whisky in another.

"Tommy."

Tommy lifted a bleary eye to the ceiling, a massive marvel of glass stained green that gleamed with a luminosity derived from reflecting off the candle arrangements adorning the chamber's walls. "I never thought you the type to spend money on pretty glass, Ollie. 'Tis like a church…"

Oliver placed his hand on the one that held the whisky glass, leaning towards his friend so he could discreetly say, "Follow me to somewhere more private."

"No," Tommy shook his head. "She thinks I'm pathetic. I'm going to show her pathetic."

Judging from the slur of his words and the alcohol laced in his breath, it was safe to say Tommy was drunk, and more so than usual at this time of the night. Oliver motioned to Diggle to help force Tommy to his feet.

"Let's get a private room to play then," said Oliver as he watched Diggle place an arm round Tommy's shoulders and a firm hand on Tommy's elbow. He wondered whom the woman Tommy spoke of was; it obviously was not the late viscountess and to his knowledge, Tommy had not been seen in the company of any woman especially.

"Why didn't you just take care of her back then? I could live with that then," Tommy mumbled, lifting a hand weakly to Oliver's shoulder.

Oliver froze, the implications of his friend's words sinking in. Tommy continued, not caring who heard him as Diggle increased his pace in ushering him to the door.

"Oliver, you ass," Tommy muttered. "You prodigious ass…"

"Tommy," began Oliver the moment they were safely in the silence of the corridor, his tone as soothing as he could render it. "We're going to send you home to Merlyn House. I will check on you tomorrow morning."

Tommy's eyes narrowed. "I watched as she chose you, Oliver. I told myself you would be good for her, and I made excuse after excuse as you seduced and bedded at will even after you told me you loved her. It was how things were done, I said.

"I proposed to her, you know. Several times. After you were gone. At first I told her and myself that it was to shield her from censure, or to engage her skills at setting things in order to save me from my miserable life, but the truth was that I always loved her."

Oliver forced himself to meet Tommy's eyes. This conversation had come out of nowhere, and he could sense Diggle averting his gaze and edging away in the hopes of offering them privacy. To the man's credit, he retained the stoicism of a first-rate butler despite the intimate nature of the conversation.

"You don't," Tommy said, sounding like he was addressing himself. "And I was going to tell her that I did, but now you're back and it's like when she sees me, all she can see is what you did to her…"

Diggle cleared his throat. "May I send for a hack, your grace?"

Oliver blinked. "Yes. You will accompany the viscount back to his home and then return here."

"Anything else, your grace?"

Before he could stop himself, Oliver said, "Send a bouquet to the woman who played Donna Anna in tonight's production of  _Don Giovanni_. A Miss Bertinelli, if I am not mistaken."

He needed a distraction. He did not want to think about Tommy's words, much less what he felt about them.

Diggle nodded and left to make the necessary arrangements, escorting Tommy with him as he went.

There was no name, no label, for the mélange of emotions that had swelled in his chest now. He had no claim on her, and he had no idea that Tommy even cared for Laurel beyond the bounds of friendship, and he did not want reminding of what had happened in the past. Oliver could freely admit he was a selfish bastard but it behooved him to never dwell upon his past with Laurel in an intellectual manner, because he knew he cared for her, and yet did his inability to refrain from doing things he wanted, that she would be hurt by…this was the evidence that he was meant to perpetuate iniquity.

Tonight was not the night to indulge in self-pity and the knowledge that he was born damaged. He slipped into the hidden door to the side of the corridor, focusing his mind on the information that he had been told upon his arrival.

A package had arrived at Verdant, addressed to its owners. The staff knew not how to contact the Arrow, save for leaving it in the owners' rooms, but they were aware that the Duke of Starling knew the Arrow.

Oliver opened the door into a room where he kept the contents of his investigations, heading straight to a cabinet in the right of the room. Sitting in it was a black box with a note, which had been delivered via a simple pulley system from the staff's quarters below.

He closed the cabinet, the box in one hand, and strode over to the armchair facing the green glass that overlooked the gaming chamber below. From here he could survey everything that happened in Verdant, though all anyone could see from below was an intricate pattern of viridescent crystal.

The note on the box was rendered with a spidery hand Oliver recognised, just as he could read the Russian language that its message was written in. "To my brother."

It appeared though Anatoli knew not why Oliver had returned to London society, but he clearly had been informed by the network of brothers he had across London that Verdant belonged to him. He had even anticipated Oliver coming to find him. Brow furrowed, Oliver ripped off the top of the box and retrieved the two vials that were within it.

One bottle was unmistakably vodka. The other emitted a foul, sharp odour and Oliver grimly applied it to the corner of one of his father's papers.

Immediately a series of letters and numbers appeared in his father's handwriting. It had to be a code of some sorts, and despite his efforts to study the paper now, Oliver could not decipher what message it bore.

Apart from the bottles, there was a file in the box labeled "John Diggle" and another note. Oliver opened the folder and scanned its contents, centering in on the most critical information he wished to have: Diggle worked for the War Office.

He did not know why the War Office was looking into him but it was possible to throw them off now that he knew of their attention.

Oliver picked up the note, which was again in Anatoli's writing, though this time in English.

"If the plot thickens and you need a finer mind, include message in post-box of 24 Bond Street. Address to 'F. M. Smoak.'"

He turned to his father's message, the row of figures panning out to no clarity before him. The rest of the papers might not even have the same set of information, he realised. This was a development that revealed as much as it concealed and Oliver had no idea how to begin to read the message.

Oliver had to find this F. M. Smoak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something I forgot to say in Chapter 1 on AO3: thank you for reading this! I should probably also state now that I tend to choose art for the story with a symbolic allusion in mind. If you're the type that likes going down the rabbit hole in looking up all these additional references, feel free to google the artwork or operas mentioned to supplement your reading.
> 
> Also I really don't speak any Russian at all (notwithstanding the fact that Anna Karenina is one of my favourite novels) and I've already been told on fanfiction by a Russian speaker about the mistakes I have made. I'm keeping them for the chapters already published (up to 11) but I'll be passing the references through people as far as I can from now on.
> 
> Sarah Maclean's Rules of Scoundrels series was an influence in writing this.


	5. Service

Number 24 Bond Street did not belong to any F. M. Smoak, but a Bartholomew Henry Allen, Esquire. A quick check of  _Debrett's_ also indicated that no person with those initials was connected to the Allen family.

Allen himself was a fresh-faced graduate from Cambridge, with a pleasant demeanour. His purpose in London was to escort his guardian's daughter to rounds of tea and parties, a most tiresome endeavour that Oliver owed to his own sister himself. The boy seemed bright from the one meeting Oliver arranged – a dinner party hosted by his mother – but it was unlikely that Anatoli had meant him.

The name 'Smoak' was exceedingly unusual and Oliver had only managed to find one person of note bearing it. Donna Smoak had been the most celebrated courtesan in London when Oliver had just been a boy, and it was said that at least three peers had completely lost their head over her. But the woman had retired very early on in her career, before Oliver had even the ambition to be a rake. It was said that Donna Smoak was under the protection of a mysterious benefactor who kept her in silks and a whole house of her own in Marylebone and another in the countryside – she was rarely seen in the city. There had also been no mention whatsoever of a link between the courtesan and the type of codes Oliver needed an expert on.

Anatoli had been unusually unhelpful about the identity of this person, when Oliver paid him a visit to press for more details three days ago.

"'F. M. Smoak' is a cipher, to make a bad pun." He shrugged. "Nobody knows who the man is, only that if you want a code made or broken, that's the person you contact."

On noticing Oliver's skeptical expression, the Russian continued, "The alternative to pressing for more details, is having your secret code released to the general public. You don't cross 'F. M. Smoak' without having thought through the consequences. And to be honest, I have already given you more than the average person would have in your position."

Were there even average people in Oliver's position?

"And Allen?" Oliver asked.

"Apparently just a friend," Anatoli said. "Just like you and the Arrow. Except, you know, actually different people."

"How do you know of what I have been doing?"

"You're not exactly subtle. Every single precaution you've taken in your secret identity thus far is testament to the part of your past I am acquainted with. Rest assured, knowing you personally was key to my deductions."

 _The conversation had unfortunately ended there_ , thought Oliver as he allowed Diggle to tie his cravat for the evening's plans to join a small company of his father's allies in the House of Lords at the opera house. Despite Oliver being most remiss in his duties in Parliament, a duke's vote was apparently essential to their purposes.

"Tell me, Mr Diggle," Oliver said, "What are your thoughts on your course of employment thus far? Do you enjoy working for a Corinthian?"

Diggle had gone to retrieve the coat that would complete Oliver's attire for the evening. His face betrayed little as he said, "It is not in my place to say, your grace."

"Do speak freely," Oliver countered, slipping an arm into the tight fit of his evening coat, which was a deep blue that set off the cream of his Marseilles quilting waistcoat splendidly.

"I believe most valets would relish the opportunity I have, your grace."

Oliver brushed the soft black velvet of his collar with his fingers as he touched a hand to the knot tied round his neck. "And do you?"

Upon receiving Anatoli's report, he had been careful not to leave any evidence of his clandestine mission in any place where Diggle had access. It then took three days of heavy drinking and careless living to frustrate Diggle's attempts at all of his jobs. To Oliver's regret, the man had yet to contradict his guise of honest service, not even when Oliver gave in to one of Helena's more creative suggestions and returned home with candlewax all over his pantaloons.

Diggle had allowed himself two seconds to be visibly disgruntled before dutifully taking care of the mess, though Oliver had caught the beginnings of a scowl whenever he mentioned Helena's name thenceforth. Suffice to say, his valet did not approve of his mistress.

"Your grace, I find this work engaging." His expression was one of humble dignity. So much for Oliver's attempt to catch him out.

"I think I can find my own way to the opera tonight, Diggle."

"Then her grace would be more than pleased to know of your kindness in showing me the way," Diggle replied evenly. "Your grace."

Oliver nearly smiled. In his more indulgent moments he quite enjoyed how sharp the man was. He now made his way to the stables to fetch his horse.

The beast was saddled and readied for an evening jaunt, while he found his stable- boy eyeing his entrance almost insouciantly. Oliver took a moment to remind himself of the boy's name, and the circumstances of his employment.

Roy Harper had been caught attempting to steal Thea's horse, and was only retained as opposed to being sent for a hanging by virtue of Moira's compassion. He did know his horses very well, as exhibited by the way he immediately placed a soothing hand on the beast's flank when it stirred at the sound of Oliver's approach.

"I need you to do me a favour, Roy," Oliver said, mounting his horse.

Roy's eyes were shrewd and he replied cautiously, "What would it be, your grace?"

Oliver frowned. The boy spoke far better than his background – poor orphan roaming the streets – would have indicated. He wondered if he had to investigate this member of his staff, as he instructed, "Deliver this to 24 Bond Street. Find out where it goes and report to me on whoever visits the place for the next week."

"Yes, your grace," Roy replied.

Oliver reached into his pocket for a whole pound and passed it to the stable boy, who looked at it with disbelief. "Be discreet about it."

Roy was clearly wary at Oliver's willingness to give him two months' pay for two days' worth of work, fingering the money almost gingerly, his gaze flicking from where it lay in his hand to Oliver's face repeatedly. "Thank you, you grace," he said, almost as an afterthought as he left.

Oliver did not wait for Diggle to follow as he urged his horse into a gallop.

* * *

Laurel bore a vase of flowers as she entered her father's study. Quentin was slouched over his desk, a scowl on his face as he scribbled on the margins of the proposed bill to the House of Lords his political ally wanted him to throw his weight behind.

"This is utter…" he trailed off upon seeing his daughter's shadow fall onto his desk. "…poppycock." He cleared his throat, eradicating all of his choicer adjectives about the draft bill and straightened. "Laurel. I didn't quite expect you this afternoon."

"The weather may have been ghastly these past few days, but our gardener sent these blooms from our greenhouse," she set the vase down in a corner of her father's office. "The countryside does seem very inviting."

Laurel had other reasons for heading to the countryside. She was sick and tired of entering ballrooms where people's heads turned to watch her every move each time Oliver made a rare appearance. She did not even have Tommy by her side anymore to crack jokes and make social event somewhat more bearable. He had not called on her since their conversation that afternoon and since the prospect of her calling on him as an unmarried woman was impossible, the fact that he showed his face at recent social events less often than Oliver made any attempt on her part to engage him in conversation at one of them impossible too. The insensitive yet genuine question posed by a very unobservant society matron last night as to whether Laurel wished to join a country house party for Christmas that the Duke of Starling and a lot of eligible males were invited to was the final straw. Laurel had decided right there and then that she would rather shoot herself then go to any more social engagements she had not unfortunately already consented to attending.

"Parliament is making little progress," conceded Quentin. "I'm sure we'll drag your mother out of London somehow."

Father and daughter exchanged a look. Viscountess Lance could be said to have lost her mind with grief upon Sara's disappearance. Most mothers pestered their daughters to go to balls to be seen on the marriage mart, but the  _ton_ and its concerns had all but disappeared from Lady Dinah Lance's mind, which was consumed with a need to investigate what happened to her younger daughter. Over the five years since it happened there had been days where Laurel's panic upon her mother's disappearance for a couple of hours gave way to a sharp sting of wretchedness deep in her heart when a Bow Street runner subsequently found Lady Lance stopping the carriage on the streets each time she spotted a girl with the same shade of blonde hair as Sara had.

Her overwhelming obsession prevented Lady Lance from leaving London for long periods of time. "We must stay where Sara can find us and where we may continue the search for her," she insisted, when Laurel had suggested the family take a trip to the Continent instead of going through the first season since the incident. While Laurel had stood in ballrooms ignoring all the snubs from the gentlemen who once begged for a place on her dance card and the snide titters each time she stepped into a lady's room during a ball, her mother combed the streets of London and spent all her pin money on engaging men to investigate the matter.

"Tell her that we must throw a small family celebration in our country house. We haven't done so since…and we used to do it every other year. It is something Sara can come home to," offered Laurel.

Quentin nodded. "It'll take this bloody bill off my mind," he muttered, then collected himself. "That is to say, this important, lengthy draft bill."

Laurel smiled. Quentin always had a problem with controlling his language, whether or not in mixed company. Her glance flickered to the other documents on his table and she narrowed her eyes as she read the title off one of them.

"'On the whereabouts of Miss Sara Lance'…Father, what is this?"

Quentin looked guilty and started shifting the envelope towards him. Laurel placed a firm hand on it and looked him hard in the eye. "Father," she said slowly. "We searched for four years. We sent runner after runner, and the results were always the same. Sara disappeared that night, along with the Duke of Starling and the Marquess, and though bodies were never found there was blood near the smashed carriage debris. You were the one to tell me to give up the search and accept that Sara may be lost to us forever. What is this now?"

He was silent for a while before he replied. "Starling sent that to me. I still rue the day you ever met him, but he said that he had some recollection of that night and recalled that Sara was not in the Starling carriage when the accident happened. As it turns out, the bas…boy has made enquiries himself. Apparently on request from your other friend, that Merlyn boy…I never really liked either of them… Anyway, there's been some talk regarding sightings of a woman of matching description in Bristol, and the duke forwarded that report to me. He still hasn't apologised enough for what he did but I'm willing to consider what the War Department found." His face crumpled. "Don't tell your mother, Laurel. I can't bear to disappoint her again, and I can't bear to disappoint myself as well – this file has just been sitting on my table for a week and I can't even bring myself to open it."

Laurel flattened her lips into a line. There was a riot of emotions coursing through her – disbelief, ire at Ollie for telling her father and not her, frustration at Tommy, in light of their recent quarrel, and then a small part of her felt incensed at the notion of Sara being alive and not contacting them while the Lance family fell apart. It did not square with her memories of her loving and considerate little sister.

"I'll read it," she said. "I'll look into the matter and you concentrate on getting mother to come home."

"Laurel, I can read a file," her father pointed out, though Laurel detected a hint of relief in the way his shoulders relaxed slightly at her suggestion.

"No, it's fine," she said, prying it out from underneath his palm. She opened the door of her father's study, filled with a suspicion that Oliver knew more than he was letting on about the matter. "I'll read it and save you the trouble of questioning the duke if you need to clarify anything. I wouldn't want to see you in the House of Lords for murder."

Quentin let out a bark of laughter, before muttering, "Damn that man."

* * *

It took Helena less than a scene into the evening's performance to send Oliver a perfumed note inviting him to visit her after curtain call. Oliver slipped it into the pocket of his coat, not missing the sultry looks that she had been directing to him throughout her song.

"Your father would have been proud to know that you are here," the owner of the box he now sat in commented. "Now if only my son would rise to the occasion like you, Oliver." Earl Merlyn smiled warmly, his hand on Oliver's shoulder – a gesture to cultivate intimacy. "You don't mind me addressing you as Oliver, do you? I confess it is difficult to call you Starling, or duke, in light of my friendship with your father. I daresay I would love to have you address me as Malcolm, irregular as it is. The prelude to continuing the close partnership between our families in your generation, I hope."

"Not at all, Malcolm," Oliver replied smoothly. "Excellent choice of venue, by the way."

"I've always said that there's nothing like theatre to inspire the questioning of one's own sensibilities," Malcolm intoned, leaning closer as his voice dropped in volume. "Consider the libretto of what is enfolding before us: the tale of a proud man's downfall, because he is unable to judge what is right, and what is wrong beyond the interest he holds for himself."

"A tragedy," Oliver said slowly, tendrils of unease unfurling in his gut. He had the feeling that the earl was speaking of something else, something beyond the plot of the show they were watching.

"Or perhaps a fact of life," Malcolm's lips twisted in nonchalance. "Are you a lover of opera, Oliver?"

Oliver affected a broad grin that bordered on the foolish in scale. "Most certainly I am. I particularly appreciate the work of the singer playing Donna Anna, as you've probably already heard."

The Earl laughed heartily. "I have no doubt of that," he said. "Miss Bertinelli is as talented as she is beautiful. But the reason I hoped you would join me here tonight is for me to introduce you to someone. Have you met a Mr Sebastian Blood?"

He certainly knew the name and about the person. The file he possessed on Blood ran through his mind as he nodded his assent: Sebastian Blood, Member of Parliament in the Commons. Born to impoverished gentry in Sheffield, his meteoric rise to power could inspire even the most cynical to cry cathartic tears of joy. Most importantly, one of the men listed in Robert's appointment book.

"I wasn't aware that my father supported the Whigs."

"Your father was the consummate statesman," a new voice interrupted. "His circumspection is what I admire most about his period of service, your grace."

They turned to face Sebastian Blood, a man of medium height. He wore his hair in tousled curls – the dandy's Titus style – that framed his blue gaze to dramatic effect.

"I beg your pardon, your grace. Lord Merlyn, I was held up at Parliament."

Malcolm gestured graciously to the seat next to them. "You see how hardworking he is, Oliver?"

"You do me too much honour, my lord. I can only hope to aspire to the heights which the last Duke of Starling achieved in his career."

Malcolm seemed to agree, saying, "Well, Robert was something of a genius at diffusing difficult situations, regardless of the parties involved. I always consulted him when I was unsure of what to do. Why, His Majesty sent him to assist me in Paris merely weeks after Robert had handled the Gordon Riots back in the eighties."

Oliver considered the new information carefully, searching his mind for corroboration of facts where possible. His childhood recollections included indistinct memories of Robert leaving the family on occasions, but his father's involvement in specific crises had not been within the purview of his knowledge. He needed time to think over this development, and its implications on his mission.

"It pleases me greatly to hear of the esteem in which you hold my father, gentlemen. But I daresay I am a poor candidate to follow in his footsteps. After all, the Lord of Sin and Vice can hardly be an agent of order." He had adopted a flippant air as he spoke, riveting his attention on the reaction of the two men before him.

Blood was undeterred, stating, "Most men I know have found service most invigorating, your grace. Why, I can see you in the Crown's service in China. Or perhaps on one of the island nations near it."

Oliver forced himself to laugh. "You are not stranding me on some godforsaken island near China, Mr Blood."

Malcolm raised a hand, his signet ring gleaming as it caught the dim light in the theatre. "Tonight is not the night to talk business, my friends. Let us enjoy the show, and Sebastian may petition Oliver tomorrow about his bill on law enforcement."

"I beg your pardon, your grace," said Blood, during a change of scenes that took particularly long.

"No offense was taken," Oliver returned.

He sat through the rest of the performance, mute with the overwhelming need to return to his private rooms in Verdant and consult his notes, or at least to retire to a more private environment so that he could think without the sound of coloratura intruding on his reasoning. His father had worked for the Crown in diplomatic missions and peacekeeping endeavours alike, both fields that were likely to attract jealous enemies and opposition. Both Blood and the earl had been contemporaries of Robert, the earl in particular meeting with his father close to thrice a week.

Oliver shook his head slightly – his father's murderer could not be Lord Merlyn. They had been close friends, their families allies since the days of the Interregnum and Oliver could remember many a hearty Christmas dinner between the Merlyns and the Queenes since the present earl was recalled from his duties in Paris with the onset of the French Revolution in 1789.

He had said it himself: Robert was a partner, a mentor. It was to Sebastian Blood that Oliver could perhaps look more closely into; if his existing records yielded nothing perhaps a midnight search of the man's study would shed more light on his culpability.

As the opera drew to a close, Oliver made a show of excusing himself and heading for the actors' dressing rooms. The path to Helena's private suite was guarded by a host of golden blooms, their combined fragrance an allusion to the loveliness of their intended recipient.

Oliver twisted open the knob to her chamber, which was shrouded in complete darkness.

"Helena?" he said, stepping into the room as he waited for his eyes to adjust fully to its black tenor. The woman had such charmingly mad ideas about their loveplay sometimes; the absence of candles was likely intentional.

He heard a swish of fabric and a footstep far too heavy to belong to his statuesque mistress, and his every sense came to sharp attention far too late to avert the dagger that was thrust into his back.

"The sins of the father will be visited upon the son," hissed a guttural male voice, as Oliver felt the pain of poison beginning to course through his body, and his knees crumbled to pitch him towards the wooden boards of the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barry went to Cambridge rather than Oxford because of its traditional reputation for the sciences. I have yet to decide which college it was.
> 
> Corinthian: a term which applied to an athletic man about town, likely to be a dandy (someone who dressed very well) and possibly a rakehell. Obviously Oliver falls into all three categories.


	6. Partner

John had failed to follow his employer closely that evening. He was accustomed to waiting outside the room in which the Duke of Starling held his private meetings, and John's knowledge of the purpose for the duke's visit to Covent Garden compelled him to dally somewhat as he rode towards it.

After all, the duke had been more than emphatic in his desire that John not follow on his heels.

He arrived at the Theatre Royal just as a landaulet drawn by a pair of matched greys pulled up from around the corner and stopped before his destination. The evening was a touch too chilly for such a vehicle, thought John as he watched as its owner stepped out gracefully, pausing only to adjust the way her paisley shawl fell about her shoulders as she dismounted.

The woman's gaze warmed with recognition as she too spotted him.

"Good evening, Mr Diggle," she said. "Will you accompany me into the opera house? That is, assuming you are not with anyone."

He hesitated and met her expectant gaze, her brown brows slightly lifted and lips pursed as she waited for him to accept. Bowing, he offered his arm to her. "It will be my pleasure to do so, Mrs Michaels."

They passed the Doric portico – designed by Robert Smirke in 1809, Hellenism having achieved newfound popularity in London tastes – while drawing curious stares from passer-bys and other patrons of the theatre alike. John's current identity as a valet afforded him the privilege of wearing understated dark colours as opposed to the green Starling livery, but he found himself longing somewhat for the anonymity that uniform attire would have afforded him.

Had he been in livery, all anyone would have seen was a servant and a lady. As he was, they saw only a man of colour daring to touch a lady.

"Let them talk," said Lyla.

"The War Office will not like it," he replied quietly.

"It is a lady's prerogative to reacquaint herself with an old friend," she announced loudly.

John let out an unsteady breath and turned his mind to his mission. "There are lovely stars adorning the darkness of the skies tonight. Have you had the pleasure of seeing them, Mrs Michaels?"

It was the code he had been taught with regard to his current assignment in his briefing. The real message was,  _I am watching the Duke of Starling._   _Are you too on assignment?_

Lyla replied, "The stars are indeed beautiful. I have seen them and look forward to viewing them tonight."

John bit back a grin of delight. Lyla was his partner, the public eye set upon the Duke of Starling to supplement his own private observations. He wondered what she had deduced, the scarce facts that he had managed to dredge up about the duke appearing in his mind with every step they took.

As if cognisant of his thoughts' direction, Lyla disengaged the hand she had around his elbow and made a sharp turn into a small storage chamber concealed by a door disguised as an ordinary wall. John took a moment to take account of the corridor's inhabitants, checking if their actions had drawn any attention, before pressing himself into the small space beside her.

They were surrounded by an assortment of props seldom used, as John surmised from the layer of dust coating some of the fake knives on the top shelf behind Lyla's body. The existence of this chamber was an open secret, as anyone who worked at the Theatre Royal or had the opportunity to see its blueprints would attest to.

"No one saw us come in," he said, pulling the door to the cupboard shut. "I think the opera just began."

Lyla made a soft sound of contempt. "Do you insinuate that I am getting sloppy? I made sure the corridor was clear before I stepped into this chamber, and my alibi is ready. As for our walk, your record of service includes the period you spent as a footman in my father's house, and it is acceptable for a lady to speak with her former servant."

They were standing mere inches apart, shrouded in a darkness only interrupted by the sliver of light creeping in from the space where the door fit into the wall. The air was thick with unaired sentiments, each prop carrying stories never to be told. He could sense the warmth her soft body radiated, hear every breath she took.

John tried to focus. "What have you learnt about the Duke of Starling?"

"All I've seen is the rakehell behaviour he used to exhibit. He's rarely seen in polite society though he met with Anatoli Knyazev twice – in disguise. That accords with our information that the duke was in Crimea for a spell. I could not ascertain the purpose of the meetings. What do you know?"

"Nothing useful. Objectively, the duke has not involved himself in anything out of the ordinary, beyond spending copious amounts of time at his gaming hell, and I have no access to the private suite of rooms he shares there with his co-founder."

"What do your instincts tell you?" Lyla knew to ask about what John left unsaid when he spoke.

"I do think he's hiding something," he admitted. "The truth of his five years away and the lie he has told about them aside, he has…has the tendency to lie whenever I inquire about his whereabouts, notwithstanding my ability to corroborate his tales with reference to his attire. And I swear he has been trying to trick me into revealing my real purpose in his employ."

There was a moment of silence as Lyla considered the value of their combined observations.

"Slade Wilson is hosting a party in two days, and I understand that the duke has been invited. I could arrange for the private rooms in Verdant to be broken into then," she suggested.

"I don't think that is advisable. His partner will be there, and with no information as of yet on the Arrow, it could potentially blow your cover."

"My cover is 'extremely inquisitive widow'. It is the role I've played for many years and my scandalmongering would barely raise brows."

"This isn't the normal searching expedition a woman of your status engages in," John pointed out. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"Then let's meet up in a fortnight and compare our notes again."

He could feel her breath caress his face with every word she uttered, a detail he was finding increasingly difficult to ignore. "No," he forced out, his voice sounding choked. "I don't think it is a good idea for us to be seen together like this. I'll send you a note if need be."

"Then when will I ever see you, Johnny?" she murmured. "This is the first assignment in two years that we've had in common. You've not replied to any of my letters – letters sent to your home, so don't give me any balderdash about being undercover."

John allowed himself to close one hand around her shoulder, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw tenderly.  _I love you, Lyla_ , he wanted to say to the woman that he grew up with, and to the daughter of the man that had recruited him into their line of work and so gave him purpose when his brother had been killed.  _But I cannot be with you, as long as the world looks with disfavour upon your taking my arm on the street._

"Doubt thou the stars are fire," he said, reciting the set of words that their had been listed to mean  _I will keep on investigating_  in the introductory briefing.

Lyla let out a huff of displeasure, one that he wanted desperately to kiss away. "Whoever set the codes for this mission has a perverse sense of humour if he knew we were both assigned to it. Act five, scene two of Hamlet indeed…" she muttered savagely.

 _But never doubt I love_ , John thought, skipping to the fourth of those famous lines. Instead he said gravely, "All the best with your side of the mission." He removed his hand and let it fall back to his side.

He felt Lyla withdraw and candle light slowly streamed into the chamber as she gently pushed open the door. Her face was cold and beautiful, her expression severe.

"Well I hope you have a fruitful evening, Mr Diggle," she said upon ascertaining that nobody was outside and left.

John closed his eyes and stood still, waiting quietly as the scent she had worn grew fainter and fainter in the storage room. When he was content that no one was likely to discover his movements, he slipped out into the comparatively better ventilated corridor, the sudden illumination of his surroundings throwing his previous environment into sharp contrast.

 _The duke was supposed to meet Earl Merlyn_ , he reminded himself, and cautiously approached the box owned by Merlyn. It came as little surprise to him that his employer was nowhere to be found, and the earl seemed somewhat surprised to see him.

"I work for the Duke of Starling," began John.

"Oh yes," exclaimed the earl. "He's been summoned by Miss Bertinelli, if one can use that word."

John expressed his gratitude, a sinking feeling entering his gut. He did not like Miss Bertinelli in the slightest, much as he had not had the opportunity to meet her. Miss Bertinelli invariably meant extra work at valeting and less time for investigating.

It was all he could do not to drag his feet as he sought directions to the opera singer's dressing room and made to follow his employer, the reason for his reluctance mostly because he did not want to stand outside while the duke cavorted with his paramour.

 _God forbid they were audible_ , John thought with an involuntary shudder.

There was a funereal quality to his journey, conferred by the trail of floral arrangements along the path leading to Helena Bertinelli's dressing room. Each presentment was more profuse than the other, and their combined fragrance was yet another olfactory assault upon his senses in this short period of time. Ungracious thoughts to the effect that the duke must have an underdeveloped sense of smell to surround himself with such women aside, John was annoyed to find that the candles closest to his destination had been snuffed out most inconveniently. His sight took some time to adjust to the new lighting, and he squinted at the figure standing in the open door of the singer's dressing room.

It was a man of medium height, shorter than the duke was, and he leaned over another form lying on the floor. John felt the stirrings of alarm when he recognised the prone man's boots – ones that he himself had picked out that very morning to match the duke's dark blue greatcoat.

He whipped out the pistol he kept at hand and aimed at the standing man.

"Don't move," John said.

Neither guilty nor startled men were prime candidates for following instructions, despite the imperative tone said instructions were given in. The figure cocked his head at hearing John's voice and then reached to his side and hurtled a large object in John's direction.

John barely managed to catch the mirror with his free hand as he witnessed the duke's assailant fleeing. Setting the mirror down, he took a step forward in pursuit before changing his mind and approaching the duke's body.

"Please be alive," John muttered. He did not want to explain to the War Office or her grace why the Duke of Starling was attacked and left for dead under his watch. Such fears were misplaced for the time being, because the duke was convulsing every now and then.

 _Poison_ , thought John grimly. He noted the hilt of the knife protruding from the duke's back – a knife not dissimilar to the props that were stored in the room he and Lyla just shared – and quickly swung the duke's arm over his shoulder. Immediate medical attention was needed.

The duke seemed to be choking for air, his face contorted into a grimace of pain. "Digg…" he managed.

"Yes, your grace?" John slipped his arm below the duke's legs and lifted him off the ground.

"Verdant… The largest painting in my suite…"

John was confused as he weaved through the corridors of the Theatre Royal towards the surface. "Your grace, you need a physician, not a brandy."

"Treat…there…" the duke breathed before losing consciousness.

He put the duke's body on his horse and did as he was told. By some miracle, the duke did not vomit until he reached the private passageways in Verdant, despite the intense ride. John pushed past the guards to the suite, noting that there was a faint smell of bitter almonds that had previously been masked by the cloying influence of Miss Bertinelli's blooms.

 _There would be a need to investigate the opera singer later_ , thought John, as he set the duke down on the thick Aubusson rug of the suite. It was as opulent as the rest of the gaming hell, with a large window of glass that looked onto the gaming room below. Three paintings of differing sizes adorned the walls, and John made his way to the largest and felt around its edges.

There was a small lever built into the gilded frame, one that John pulled gently and the whole framed picture swung aside to reveal a smaller chamber. Some would label such a room a closet – the private space where the devout offered his fervid orisons in desperate hope. John ignored the burst of cold air that greeted him as he carried the duke to the table in its centre and laid him out on his front. He recognised the cabinet to the side as containing a large collection of herbs similar to the type owned by apothecaries.

Stripping off his coat, John began to save the man's life.

* * *

_The air was thick with the smell of blood and filth. He had never noticed that blood carried a metallic tang before; now he knew it better than any other odour he had ever encountered._

_Oliver saw him dip a finger into the pool trickling towards him and lick it, before running the same finger down his cheek to trace the tearstains it bore._

_"_ _There, there…" his father's murderer murmured, stroking Oliver's matted hair tenderly._

_Oliver was shuddering, from spending a whole night in the damp chill of the hulk, covered in Robert's blood. Or perhaps it was the fear that reduced him to a whimpering man-child before his father's killer. He heard himself sobbing, his thoughts of the way Robert had died and the exhaustion from the days they had endured together combining within him as a dark mass that crushed his senses to numbness._

_"_ _I would never lie to you, Oliver," his father's murderer said gently, dropping into a crouch before him. As always Oliver could not see his face, whether in his memories or his fevered dreams. "Robert's death was your fault but you can still absolve his sins – why, you've already been baptised in his blood and guts."_

 _"_ _Please," Oliver breathed. He only felt terror tinged with weariness._

 _"_ _Tell me what he confessed to you before we had to break him fully, Oliver. You can make things right."_

_Were those his father's words? Oliver found the strength to shake his head slowly. He did not know what the man spoke of, anymore than he wanted to reveal anything._

_"_ _Do cooperate, Oliver. You can be the man your father wanted you to be. He told me so himself, do you know? You can still go back to Moira and Thea and your dear Laurel."_

_Oliver saw Laurel replace his father's murderer then, her eyes full of tears as she pointed a finger at him in accusation. Guilty, she mouthed repeatedly._

_Yes, he tried to say, but his lips were cracked and his throat dry. He gagged and emptied what little he had in his stomach to the ground, his bile mixing with the blood at his feet._

_"_ _No answer?" his attacker said, disappointment and distance entering his voice. "Well then, we'll have no choice but to persuade you a little more."_

_Oliver felt the cold smoothness of a knife plunge into his chest and the seductive call of oblivion take his consciousness before the knife could be twisted._

Oliver's eyes snapped open. His senses were slow in taking in his surroundings, and only mere fragments of thoughts were filtering into his mind, but he felt the presence of another person leaning over him. He grabbed the nearest weapon he could find – a bloodied scalpel – to hold it to his companion's throat, his body crouching over in in readiness for a fight.

"Do you always attack the men who save your life, your grace?" Diggle's voice carried with it his dry sense of humour, his dark eyes gleaming with a hint of amusement. As Oliver's sight stabilised, he made out the outline of a pistol aimed at him in his valet's hands.

"And do you always attack the men you rescued from death merely moments before?" Oliver returned.

Diggle let out a chuckle, his gaze not leaving Oliver's knife-hand. "Touché."

The silence between them was taut as Oliver recognised that they were in his secret chamber in Verdant. To his right, his painting-door hung ajar from its hinges, allowing a cool breeze to permeate the room.

"Would you like to tell me the truth about why a valet would carry a pistol to work?" he asked, relaxing his crouch into a more comfortable sitting position on the edge of the table he had been perched on. He returned the scalpel to its previous position on the table.

"By all means, you first, your grace," Diggle said graciously. "Please explain why a duke of the realm creates a labyrinthine gaming hell and finds himself repeatedly attacked and speaks of torture in his feverish swoon."

"I did not swoon," Oliver denied flatly. "I was stabbed and poisoned."

"Arsenic," Diggle explained, finally lowering his weapon to his side. "The knife used was a blunt dagger used as a common prop in the Theatre Royal."

Oliver confirmed this, his eyes darting to the bloodied knife lying next to him. There were bandages wound tightly round his waist – Diggle's expert handiwork – and he could smell the lavender oil that had been slathered onto his person. The scent of blood and bile was also in the air, which was probably what had triggered his memories so vividly.

"What did the War Office tell you about me?" Oliver asked, testing his ability to stand without support.

If Diggle was surprised that Oliver was aware of his real mission, he did not show it.

"You vanished for five years," his valet said. "During which your father was probably murdered. You come back now and made contact with Knyazev and his ring of spies, and set up this place as a base of operations. What is your purpose?"

"You said it yourself: my father was murdered."

"Normal peers send men to make enquiries for them. I had a good look at some of your files on Verdant's members while you were sleeping. What exactly are you looking for, your grace?"

Oliver stared at Diggle's severe expression and made the decision that he knew would change everything. "Caroline Diggle, known as Carly to her friends and family. And little Andrew. Both live in Ripon, where Mrs Diggle runs the business that her late husband used to, supplementing her income with what you send home from your own work."

At his recitation of the information he had on Diggle's sister-in-law and nephew, his valet became incensed and raised his pistol to Oliver's head. "Are you threatening my family?" he growled.

Holding his empty hands out before him, Oliver said slowly, "No. I am merely reminding you of what we both consider the most important of all: our families. Someone murdered my father, someone who knew him and my family very well. It is possible that the same someone made an attempt on my life tonight."

"Hire more guards. You are, after all, a duke of the realm," Diggle put out, though he did not sound convinced of his own suggestion, and Oliver knew that he had broken through to him.

"My father  _had_  guards. I need to save my family, Diggle. And tonight has only made me realise one thing more, that I cannot do this on my own."

"What are you proposing?" Diggle demanded, his pistol lowering somewhat.

"I ask for the chance to fight better for my family. I need a man I can trust to cover me – whether by corroborating my alibis, or in an assault." Oliver had been slowly approaching Diggle, and he now placed a hand over the barrel of the pistol, which was pointed at his heart. "I need a partner."

He licked his lips, a habit that Oliver had noticed to indicate his being deep in thought. Putting away the pistol, Diggle swallowed and said, "A week for me to consider this."

"Done," agreed Oliver, as he reached forward to retrieve his shirt. He fingered the bloodied slit in the back of its material thoughtfully before he pulled it over his head in a single graceful motion. "Well, shall we return to Starling House to tell my mother about the unfortunate riding accident I got into this evening?" He gave the front of the shirt a tentative sniff. "And the bad oysters I had."

Oliver did not wait for a reply, stepping neatly over the frame of the door as he exited the closet. He headed straight to the cabinet to check for deliveries for the Arrow. "By the way, will you need a chair of your own in this room?"

Diggle was watching his employer with an expression that approached disbelief, and he draped the ruined coat that Oliver had worn to the Theatre Royal over his arm as he entered the main chamber.

"I could report you to the War Office," Diggle said pointedly, setting the coat down on the seat of the armchair.

Olive turned to him, a thin envelope that he had extracted from the cabinet in his hand. "I know." He crossed the room to retrieve a letter opener and cut the envelope open.

"They will stop you. They will close this place down and denounce you to society, and whatever you are still keeping from me will put the duchess and Lady Thea at risk."

"No," Oliver said, looking Diggle directly in the eye. "The War Office may curtail my activities, but my family will be safe. You wouldn't let anything happen to them after you were instrumental in preventing my own efforts to protect them."

Diggle crossed his arms across his chest. "You don't know that."

Oliver paused, the papers he had been sliding out of the envelope only revealed halfway. "I made a decision this evening, Diggle," he said quietly, "to tell you of this place and live rather than preserve my secret and die a casualty of a mysterious stabbing in an opera house. I chose to do so because five days ago you covered all of Mrs Raisa's duties without being asked or compensated, when she sprained her wrist, the last in a string of goodwill you've bestowed upon my household since you've entered my service. You're a good man, and I think I can trust you with my family's safety in the event something happens to me."

Diggle considered Oliver's words for a long moment, before walking to the closet and securing the painting back in its place to conceal it. It was a reproduction of Rembrandt's  _The Sacrifice of Isaac_ , and Diggle studied the way Abraham's hand obscured his son's face before letting out a sigh and saying, "Shall we make enquiries about Miss Bertinelli then?"

Oliver had read the tersely worded note from Anatoli – "See enclosed" – and now raised the piece of paper that Anatoli had sent to him up in answer to Diggle's question. On it was written in an exact reproduction of Oliver's handwriting, and in the code he had sought to test the Smoak individual with, " _Anatoli: tell the Arrow that I do not wish to be found_."

"Find out what you can about Helena's involvement with my attack and arrange for her to receive a string of rubies as the end of our arrangement. My priority is the enigmatic F. M. Smoak."


	7. Search

With Anatoli's decision to be reticent, Oliver had three options in gathering information.

The first: Diggle. Oliver had given him the address, the name and the vocation of the person he wished to find. Diggle wore an expression of incredulity – London's population was massive – until the notion of codebreaking arose.

"That's not the name we use," Diggle said, as he handed Oliver the cane he was to carry that evening. "War Office operatives address their queries to a 'Mr Felix Sherwood', albeit to the same address. That's an alias as well; I've looked into this before and no such person has been ever seen." At that Diggle chuckled. "It appears you have managed to find the one person more elusive than your Arrow persona, your grace. You are clearly meant to be bedfellows."

Oliver shot him a long-suffering look for the humour he was displaying at the situation.

"I'll see what I can find," Diggle conceded. "Though this is not an acceptance of your offer. I've looked into your former mistress as well. Following your…accident, she has disappeared without a trace. The pearls you bid me buy are still in the box I got them in."

"You have four days to accept," Oliver told him, taking his hat and tucking it under his arm. "Consider the pearls a present and present them to your sister-in-law or any woman of your choice. We need to focus on the Smoak person, Diggle. My enemy knows who I am and has begun to strike at me directly. My family is next."

Diggle turned his back at hearing that piece of emotional blackmail, something Oliver was beginning to interpret as a more discreet way to roll his eyes in the presence of his employer. They walked to the stables, where their mounts were being prepared by Oliver's next source.

Roy Harper was apparently something of a genius at trailing individuals. "Good evening, your grace," he said to Oliver. "Mr Allen and his staff have made a total of fifteen journeys from the house and there have been no callers since you last asked. I have a man on every vicinity visited and will promptly find out how the note you asked me to deliver left Bond Street. One of the houses that Mr Allen visited belongs to a woman that my friend Sin heard her servants address as 'Miss Smoak'. That was the name on your note, wasn't it, your grace?"

 _He could read?_  Oliver felt slightly surprised; there were hidden depths to his young spymaster. "Increase your surveillance of this Miss Smoak. Find out her first name and report to me on her whereabouts as soon as possible."

"Yes, your grace," Roy nodded, before turning to retrieve Diggle's saddle from where it was stored in the stable.

"Associate? A man on every vicinity?" asked Diggle once Roy was out of earshot.

"Roy has recruited a couple of his friends from his street-waif days," Oliver explained. "One for every possible lead until I rule it out completely."

Diggle looked horrified. "Did you-"

"No," Oliver clarified quickly, mounting his horse. "He did it on his own." Though if Oliver was to be honest, he was rather impressed with the former horse thief's resource and initiative. Where Anatoli had inherited a network of informants from his family's shady dealings before the Tsar had acted against the Knyazevs, Roy built his own network, with the money that Oliver had provided to him. It was probably terrifying to imagine what he would have done with more money. Systematically engineer the downfall of the mob's poor lot, perhaps, and achieve suffrage for all men.

Oliver watched Roy as the boy returned. Not a boy, he corrected himself. Roy was older than his younger sister, who, much as Oliver disliked to admit it, was no longer the same twelve-year-old girl he had left behind. As a matter of fact, Thea could theoretically be married within a matter of months.

"I always earn the money I get, Mr Diggle," the lad grinned, fastening Diggle's saddle with a swift efficiency that spoke of his light touch and deft fingers, evidently having overheard their exchange.

Diggle said flatly, "You were a horse thief."

Roy grinned wider. "Never said it was what the law would classify as honest living." As he reached across Oliver caught the beginnings of a scar on his stable boy's hand, the mark left behind by a branding from his previous brush with the law.

Roy caught him looking and pulled back his sleeve. "Have you ever seen a branding, your grace? 'T' for thief for all who claim the benefit of clergy the first time they get caught stealing." He was watching Oliver's reaction for signs of disgust, or morbid fascination, the way the perfumed upper-class gawked and gaped at monstrosities at travelling fairs.

Oliver flicked a glance at the mark, which was administered to all first-time male offenders under the legal fiction that they were under the protections of the church, a privilege Becket fought Henry II for all so long ago. Waving his hand perfunctorily as a sign that his stable-boy was dismissed, he did not allow Roy the perverse satisfaction of seeing Oliver's aristocratic reaction, which was in itself facetious: he had seen a branding. He bore the weight of that experience on his own back.

They got onto their horses and broke into a steady canter, weaving through the other vehicles in Mayfair. The traffic situation in London was only getting worse by the day; Oliver did not remember the floods of locomotive contraptions being this abundant in any of the times he had been in the city before he left.

"If I may, your grace? Is there a reason we are here tonight?" Diggle asked upon their reaching his destination at King Street, St James's.

He was getting rather tired of the formal address given that he spent most of his time in Diggle's company. "Filial duty."

"Naturally. Family first."

They stepped into the Palladian-styled building that housed Almack's Assembly Rooms, that bastion of societal prejudice based on status and one' willingness to comply with the strictures of society. The exclusiveness of Almack's was notorious: Diggle's station, or lack thereof meant he could not hope to enter the ballroom, but Moira had previously exercised her powers as a patroness to make special arrangements. He was allowed to wait in vigil in the cloakroom, and he now took his post stoically.

"I'll be waiting until you need the men's room, your grace," Diggle said with a straight face, a reference to the time Oliver had lost him on purpose on the second day of his employ.

The side of Oliver's mouth quirked up in a half-smile and he entered the ballroom. Below the crystal chandelier was his sister, caught up in a lively reel with a blond lordling Oliver remembered vaguely to be named Lord Chase. He searched the crowd for his mother, whom he found standing next to the tall arched-topped windows with her fan in her hand.

The duchess was a veritable fount of information regarding  _ton_ gossip, and there was nothing that happened in society that she would not have heard of. Despite the  _scintilla temporis_ that was Donna Smoak's time in the public – a mere two years, Oliver was fairly sure that Moira would be able to enlighten him on the courtesan.

"Oliver!" Moira exclaimed, sounding surprised as he approached her. She was a vision in an evening gown the colour of champagne, and had been in deep conversation with Walter Steel before Oliver had appeared. "You did not tell me you were making an appearance tonight – we should have left together."

Oliver smiled politely. If he had left for Almack's with his mother he would have had debutantes pelted at him from every corner by now. As it was there were heads turning in his direction and a horrifying gleam in eyes of ambitious mothers abound each time they made eye contact with him. It was imperative that he remove himself quickly if he did not want to be waylaid by any viragos determined to secure his hand before an altar.

"Walter, do you mind fetching me some lemonade? I find myself rather thirsty all of a sudden," Moira said, sensing Oliver's desire for privacy. The man excused himself with a chivalrous bow.

"Walter?" Oliver echoed – was that a blush on his mother's cheek?

Moira ignored his question and asked one of her own. "What brings you here, Oliver? I would have thought you would rather be die than be caught here, of all places."

There was some truth there; he would not have urgently sought his mother out in Almack's had he not been stabbed the night before.

"I need your help," he confessed. "A friend asked me if I had heard of a 'Donna Smoak' and you're the only one I know who would be able to recall information about such a person."

"A friend," Moira repeated skeptically, before closing her eyes in resignation and uttering, "I shouldn't be saying this here, but Donna Smoak was a member of the demi-monde from 1790 to 1792."

"Yes," Oliver said impatiently. "What of her family?"

Moira opened an eye. "What are you up to, Oliver Jonas Queene?" she demanded, folding her open fan.

Oliver thought quickly, before blurting, "A friend of mine wants to know if the famed Cyprian has a daughter or niece, because he thought he saw a woman that looked a lot like her."

Disbelief was written all over Moira's face.

"It's a bet," he added. "Whomever can find the identity of the woman out first wins."

Moira was far too much of a lady to visibly react to the pathetic attempt at prevarication her son was engaging in. "'Smoak' is an assumed name," she continued. "I understand that the woman was the youngest daughter of a family living in Goodman's Fields before her ruination in 1788. But she only made her debut as a professional courtesan in 1790."

That meant Donna was likely to be Jewish: the area south of High Street and Whitechapel was filled with Jewish bankers and businessmen.

"What is the family name?"

"I don't know. Donna Smoak was infamous for her beauty and her sudden retirement, but there isn't anything in her short-lived career of particular note and I never cared to discover her real name or the precise tale of woe behind her profession." Moira straightened, a signal that the gossip was ending. "Now will you tell me what this is really about? I heard that you ended things with that Greek opera singer of yours – I have eyes, Oliver, I saw you parade her down the street – but surely you are not hunting down a woman near my age to nurse a broken heart."

This Oliver knew precisely how to respond to. "Mother," he said, taking one of her gloved hands and pressing a kiss to her palm. "Any man or boy would count himself the most blessed among his peers to have the love of a woman of your age."

"You are a terrible flirt," she admonished, her tone sharp but her eyes dancing with laughter. "Don't forget you have a title to pass on to the heirs male of your body."

"In due time," Oliver said, relinquishing his mother's hand and casting a quick look at his surroundings for possible avenues of escape from the encroaching onslaught of ambitious mamas and their daughters. He had to speak with two pairs, given the crush, but swiftly found himself in a shadowed corridor silent enough for him to think.

"Ollie," a female voice said in greeting. Oliver turned to see Laurel sipping at a glass of punch, dressed in a peach satin gown that brought out her fine complexion.

"Have you seen Tommy?" she asked, before he could respond.

"No," Oliver shook his head, trying to disregard the complex range of emotions that always struck him when he thought of Laurel or was in her presence. "No, I haven't."

"I hear you've been well, Oliver," Laurel said, coming closer to him. He could smell the scent of roses she had worn the moment she reached adulthood wafting over, sense the slight accusatory inflection she always injected into her words when she was displeased. "Acquiring and then discarding a mistress by mid-Season, drinking hard and gambling deep when otherwise."

He stared at her, his fingers beginning to fidget as they did when he was uneasy. "Laurel, I am sorry for everything that has happened," he said as he rubbed his index finger with his thumb. "I cannot tell you how much I wish to return to that ball five years ago and make different choices."

It was a familiar refrain from a game he played in his mind sometimes, called 'What if Oliver had chosen differently?" After all, if Oliver had not drunk heavily before his engagement ball, then he would not have kissed Sara. If Oliver had not kissed Sara, he would not have disgraced Laurel by leaving. If Oliver had not left the ball, his father would not have followed him out of London.

And finally, if his father had not followed him, if his father had not been forced to rescue his son from eternal infamy and the consequences of his actions, then Robert Queene would still be alive and well.

Laurel did not believe him for a second. "Really?" she said, the incredulity in her tone belying the true acridity that she felt. "Because I look at you now, and I can't see how you lost anything by instigating that chain of events. You still have your good life as a peer of the realm. You still have your mother, your sister and all the opportunity to indulge in the sin and vice that you so enjoy you bear them both as a moniker. You are free to act as any other man of your station, Ollie. Don't you dare lie to me anymore – you have never been able to think beyond yourself."

Oliver bit his lip, reeling back the emotions that tempted to swell over. Emotions that would compel him to confess to her the events from his five years away. Such a bitter exchange was not unfamiliar to him: their misspent history was peppered with similar events where he invariably disappointed her expectations of him. These were expectations he had always desperately wished to fulfill, ones that he could not help but purposely sabotage himself when presented with an opportunity to. He masked his feelings; there was no place or time for that sort of honesty between them – the bottom line was that he had failed her as he failed his father in the past.

"And when were you going to tell me that you knew Sara was alive?" she demanded. Her eyes were now filled with tears and her voice quivered with anger. "I read your report. I sent a runner myself to confirm it. You knew my sister was seen in Bristol, and you never told anyone from my family despite the peace of mind it would give us. How could you?"

Oliver kept silent, recalling the contents of the file he had sent to her father. He could not have talked precisely of what he had seen in Bristol – it was never his secret to share, even if one of the first things he did upon escaping back to England was to look for Sara. All he had sought to do was to give the viscount hope by embellishing the news. To give Laurel hope.

"Good-bye, Oliver," said Laurel vehemently, withdrawing. "I have thought it over and over, and I cannot see how it is I ever loved you. It's always been falsehoods and evasions on your part. From now on, you are a stranger to me."

He could not reply, but he wanted to do something to stop her. Oliver reached for her wrist, which was adorned by a ruby bracelet he recognised as Tommy's birthday present to her when she was sixteen. He had presented her with a canary on that same birthday, and spent his time at home teasing her by claiming that her pet sounded far more pleasant and so he would call her "pretty bird" in the hopes that she began to emulate the creature. Then Laurel had swatted him playfully.

Laurel now pulled free of his grip, her eyes flashing. She turned slightly at the sound of another set of approaching footsteps – ones that Oliver recognised as belonging to Diggle.

"I bid you good evening, your grace," she said stiffly, and slipped back into the ballroom.

Diggle seemed to notice Oliver's dark mood, but simply said, "I have urgent news from Roy, your grace. The woman known as 'Miss Smoak' has been identified as the former courtesan Donna Smoak. Roy reports that his friend Sin managed to ascertain the woman's location tonight."

"Where?" barked Oliver harshly.

Diggle raised a brow at his tone. "At a house party hosted by a Joseph 'Slade' Wilson, a businessman of mysterious connections. I believe it's occurring as we speak in his house… Your grace?"

Oliver had strode down the corridor. "Retrieve my possessions from the cloakroom and bring me a change of clothes to the party tomorrow. I will meet you at Wilson's house when you reach."

"Your grace, where in the world are you going now?" Diggle called after his retreating figure.

"Don't you dare follow me."

Oliver leapt onto his horse, urging it to ride fast towards the location of the house party. The skies were uncharacteristically clear, every star an offense to the tumult of frustrations roiling within him. He needed something to go right tonight, a task that he could focus on and that absolved him of considering maudlin sentiments.

Slade Wilson's party was situated in a country house in Cambridgeshire, an exclusive affair that everyone in society seemed to know the details of, without confirming whether they had indeed been in attendance. It was an annual affair dedicated to the pursuit of hedonism, and the guests were often an eclectic mix of artists, Cyprians, aristocrats and businessmen alike. Guests were known to return prematurely from exhaustion, and while it was an unspoken convention that one did not reveal the parties involved in what had ensued on Wilson's grounds, there were those who still spoke in hushed tones of unusual entertainments, licentious liaisons and heavy gambling.

Oliver had received an invitation he was planning to ignore but now it allowed him to explain his presence should he be caught at the function. Wilson was a peculiar chap, with eccentricities about party etiquette that varied from year to year. Oliver had no idea how his sudden appearance would be received, but he thought it might appeal to the man's sense of whimsy.

Adrenaline eclipsed the vestiges of his encounter with Laurel as he spotted the Tudor façade of Wilson's country house, left untouched despite the popular tendency to rebuild some homes in the most fashionable style of the day. There was a sense of certainty in him, a peculiar conviction that he was on the brink of a critical discovery for his mission and that the night would not have been an utter waste, filled with regrets and a cul-de-sac at every line of enquiry he employed in the hopes of finding F. M. Smoak.

Oliver brought his horse to the stables and stripped off his coat and cravat. He had been riding at a gallop since he left London and the beads of perspiration trailing down his back were an invitation to change his attire. Trudging to the main door, he waited for the butler to open it and introduce him to his host.

Instead, Wilson opened the door himself, before letting out a guffaw of laughter. "Well, I did hope to be surprised by one of my guests this year!" He ushered Oliver in. "The evening's planned festivities are over, but I would highly recommend keeping to your room right now unless you already planned a nocturnal visit."

"I am looking for Miss Smoak," replied Oliver, as his host pointed out the room that was to be his for the duration of his visit.

Slade Wilson stilled. "That is one puddle you can't play in, kid," he replied, invoking the name he had addressed Oliver by in their youth. "Miss Smoak is here on the agreement that other guests will not disturb her. I invited her to court her expertise, you see."

Oliver did not understand what he was speaking of – what expertise did a retire courtesan have, exactly? But he produced a wicked smile for the mercenary and occasional art dealer that he had met in the Orient during the five years he spent away from England. "Very well," he said affably.

His host shot him a warning look but left him standing outside his room, with the message that a hot bath would be sent up first thing in the morning, seeing how close it was to dawn already. Judging from his disheveled attire, Oliver guessed that the man was about to continue his own nocturnal jaunt. He waited for the sound of footsteps to ebb away, before opening the door to his room and discarding his coat, cravat and gloves on the bed. He was going to find Miss Smoak, whether Slade Wilson liked it or not.

It was logical to procure a full guest list and judge how many rooms were taken – even better if he could chance upon a list of preferences and so deduce which room she was in. He headed to the room that was likely the study, based on the typical layouts of houses from this period. It was locked, and Oliver took a moment to examine its make.

Slade secured his secrets with a classic pin tumbler lock, something that he had encountered many times before. Slipping out the thin piece of metal he had designed and prepared for his reentry into society, Oliver applied a small amount of torque to the lock's plug and patiently located the pin stack. The lock opened with a click, and he stepped into the moonlit study where Slade worked during the day.

Oliver was greeted by a desk with papers strewn in a haphazard manner upon it and shelves and shelves of books and files only interrupted by paintings from various periods, yet another of his host's passions. Oliver had gotten his Rembrandt from Slade.

He stepped around the desk and inspected the papers on it. They were mostly bills related to the festivities, and there was no guest list. Oliver shifted his attention to the shelves, which held dictionaries, tomes on history and art, and files marked with names, arranged alphabetically. He made his way to 'S', looking for a 'Sherwood' or 'Smoak'.

There was nothing. Oliver was about to check the section on 'P', in the hopes that Slade would have something on his parties, when a familiar name caught his eye: a file marked 'Starling', covered with dust, had been hastily shoved behind two other files, which marred the neat perfection of the files' arrangement.

Oliver frowned, raising a hand to that series of files with the intention to read its contents.

The door behind him opened. Oliver dropped into a crouch next to the table just as another person entered the study, likely a woman, he judged, from the swish of heavy skirts with every step she took. To confirm his suspicions, a female voice began mumbling as he slipped beneath the desk in the hopes that his intrusion would not be discovered.

"This word cannot possibly exist," muttered the woman as she came around the desk, presumably to peer at the books on the shelves. He caught a glimpse of shoes, which despite the dim lighting, appeared to be red, and slim ankles as she hiked up her skirts somewhat to stand on her toes.

She was still talking to herself, repeating a series of similar words like a mantra.  _Conjugation_ , Oliver realised. She was conjugating words, in what sounded to be Latin, though his failure to pay any attention while in school did not aid him in this regard. He heard her gasp and watched a heavy dictionary fall just before where he was crouched.

"Hell's bells," the woman said, and then immediately, "I did not say that. That is, I need to stop talking to myself."

Oliver was moments away from being discovered, but he felt the beginnings of laughter creep upon him. There was just something remarkably ridiculous about the situation, most particularly when taking into account the utterances that the woman espoused.

And then the inevitable: he could only watch as she bent down to retrieve the book. Her eyes widened in shock behind a pair of spectacles as she came across his presence, and she let out a small squeal of surprise.

Oliver acted quickly, darting out of his hiding place and pressing a hand to her mouth, his other hand on her upper arm to prevent her from bolting. From the way she was dressed, this was no servant, unless Slade had the habit of clothing his female servants in pink ball gowns that displayed their décolletage to great effect.

The man was depraved but Oliver reckoned even he had his limits – this was no uniform.

He heard a commotion outside the room – questions like "Did you hear that?" "Isn't this area out of bounds?" uttered in broad accents – and cast an urgent look at the closed door behind them.

 _They were going to be discovered prying into Slade's private study_ , Oliver thought,  _and without a proper alibi_. He glanced at his captive, who was too was watching the door with alarm.

He had only one plan to evade suspicion. Removing his hand from her mouth, he cradled her face and whispered, "Madam, I beg your pardon for what I must do." At the same time, he released her arm so he could lift her off the ground to position her on the shelf behind. They were now at a more level height, and he could see the many questions she had in the way she looked at him. The beginnings of a "what" were forming upon her lips when they heard the sound of the doorknob turning and her curiousity gave way to abject panic.

The door opened, and Oliver dipped his head to capture her open mouth in a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay Felicity finally appears!
> 
> Sherwood: a reference to the comics' Robin Hood allusions
> 
> Almack's events were historically held on Wednesdays but as will be seen in later chapters please assume that this happened on a Sunday.
> 
> Demi-monde, Cyprian: alternative names for courtesans
> 
> Slade's house is based on Haddon Hall even though the real Haddon Hall is in Derbyshire rather than Cambridgeshire.
> 
> Orient: in this case used in the same sense as in Edward Said's Orientalism
> 
> Questions that people may have:
> 
> (1) Does Oliver still love Laurel? Yes, Oliver will always adore Laurel. To paraphrase a very astute commentator (jbuffyangel, anyone?), Laurel represents the ideal of a pre-island life to Oliver. He loves the ideal more than the woman, but the woman is tied up with the ideal and she is literally the embodiment of all he lost. Obviously this is not the makings of a functional romantic relationship. If I believed that Oliver was good for Laurel, I would have them work it out. But I don't, though I must say I think it's a very important aspect of character development that Oliver must go through to progress. He does love Laurel as a friend. To those GA/BC purist fans who are foaming at the mouth at my appropriation of 'pretty bird', I am very sorry. I think that the characters as they were designed in Arrow are absolutely toxic for each other and both of them need to change significantly if the relationship is ever going to work. Laurel needs someone who calls her out when she is being harsh and unfair (I think she does beat herself up about it later on some level) and Oliver is the prime candidate for self-flagellation, so they will just make each other extremely unhappy.
> 
> I think I was rather inspired by what Lorraine Heath wrote in In Bed with the Devil where her own Oliver (okay, Lucian) positively adores Fanny but realises that the love of his life is really Catherine. It's going to be the same thing here where the love of his life is Felicity but he will be hung up over Laurel, because Laurel is simply the life that he could have lived. But you don't live trying to get back what can never be. You live when you discover that there is something that is absolutely wonderful and beautiful about a future, and you go for it with all you can. Oliver will find this out eventually, but until then he's going to be completely obtuse about his burgeoning feelings for Felicity. Full disclosure: Sherry Thomas is my favourite historical romance writer (tied with Courtney Milan) and so I am not afraid to go down the angst route.
> 
> (2) Why is Laurel so mean to Oliver? My response to this is instinctively, why wouldn't she be? In the context of this story it makes more sense than it does now. Oliver's actions have ruined Laurel's prospects, something that I allude to in chapter 2. In this time she would have been completely shunned by Society and shouldn't even be seen at Almack's (the explanation for this is that Moira is a patroness and gets her a voucher). It is entirely possible that she would not be invited to any events, made fun of as a cautionary tale so everyone would know of her humiliation, and given the cut direct when she was in public. Given that it was her own sister that ran off with Oliver, she would be considered loose by association and it is not implausible to imagine men offering to take her on as a mistress, especially since Laurel is really beautiful. The bottom line is that the 19th century was an awful time to be a woman and Oliver has literally ruined her life.
> 
> From a characterisation point-of-view, I would say that Laurel is a proud person (not pejoratively), and it is not easy for her to go from prospective queen(e) of society to total pariah. Her self-worth has been shaken and this is confirmed by the treatment of people around her. This doesn't give her license to treat Oliver like he is the scum of the earth but it's not like Oliver does anything but confirm what she thinks of him by staying silent and feeling worthless. Laurel can say things that are hurtful - this is a specific bad trait I think is consistent with who she is - but she does not intend to hurt people. I think Laurel has a confrontational personality, a belief that things need to be hashed out, screaming match or not and what she needs is for Oliver to be honest. Oliver compartmentalises every aspect of himself and spends a lot of time avoiding his own emotions - emotions that he feels very strongly - so he can't even be honest with himself beyond deciding that it is time to brood.


	8. She

There he was, seated amidst the mire of squalor, the fetid air washing all over his trappings of privilege to grime them with all of the brutish melancholia it held.

Laurel motioned for the hack she was in to draw alongside its counterpart, past the scores of beggar children lining Three Colt-Lane with their emaciated frames and sunken faces. Looking down at her clothing – a plain dress that had been procured by her ladies' maid so as to avoid drawing too much attention to her intrusion into this part of London, Laurel tightened her hold on her pistol and opened the door of her hack.

It was a very short journey to make, merely a step down to the ground and then back up into the other hack, but the smell, which had been insidiously permeating the confines of her hired vehicle prior, was in its full force and confirmed what she already knew: the pristine house in Mayfair she called home could have been a world away from the slums of East London.

The fact that this particular area of Bethnal Green was where the filthy ditch in Lamb's-fields – notorious for the way the rotting carcasses of animals and other rubbish alike caused its pestilential overflow into the poorly maintained streets – was situated added to the smell.

Laurel slipped into the hack that the runner she hired had reported to her of, flashing its sole inhabitant a small smile.

Tommy's eyes were haunted, but hot anger sparked behind them as he recognised her.

"What the devil do you think you're doing here?" he demanded, forgetting to censor his language as he began inspecting her for injuries. "Does your father – does anyone know you're here? Goddamit, Laurel, we are in a slum! Are you looking to be stabbed?"

Laurel calmly lifted the pistol she held. "Says the person who's wearing his normal clothing and unarmed." She gestured at his coat. "One of those buttons could feed the entire street for a month. If not for our shared history, I might be compelled to try robbing you at gunpoint myself. It will raise a lot of money for my proposed orphanage."

He did not look amused.

"My maid is in the hack next to this one," she conceded, "if it makes you feel better we can begin travelling back – I've instructed my driver to follow your hack."

Tommy rapped on the ceiling at once, his glare not leaving Laurel's face. The vehicle began motion, and for a while there was only the sound of wheels struggling to shift over the uneven cobblestones of the road, the occasional wail of hungry children and the bark of stray dogs.

"I came to look for you," she said quietly. "My runner tells me you've been sitting in a hack in various streets of Bethnal Green ever since the day we argued."

Tommy made a non-committal grunt in reply, and Laurel regarded his expression. It was always Oliver who had been the brooder in their trio, whom one plied carefully with questions to discover the cause of his dark mood. Tommy was supposed to be the good-natured one, always smiling and joking away any instances that hurt his feelings.

She took in an unsteady breath. He was not making it easy for her.

"The last time you and I were in a slum, I was nursing a broken heart," she began, hoping that this was a suitable prelude to her apology. "Are you nursing one yourself?" She stopped herself from wincing at the tone her voice had taken on, which was far too jovial, far too flippant for her intention.

Tommy looked slightly amused at her question. "In a way."

Laurel jerked her head at his reply. She had assumed that his mood had been caused by their falling-out. "What's she like?"

"She's caring and compassionate, quick to help the less fortunate with what little resources she has. She's beautiful, both inside and out." He looked at her intently, though there was a sense of wistfulness to the way he held himself, in the turn of his neck, the close of his fist around an object she could not see.

"She sounds like a paragon," Laurel said, not without a hint of resentment at the woman who had apparently driven him to despair.

Tommy was really enjoying the conversation, his shoulders buckling as he chuckled with every word. "She has faults. I grew up with her and are privy to them all."

Laurel felt herself relax. Her. He was talking about her. "She certainly has," she agreed. "For one thing, she has a very short temper. And she can be completely oblivious to the feelings of others when she has decided upon a course of action, or a particular interpretation "

Tommy was now silent, patiently waiting for her to finish.

"I also have a terrible tendency to speak harshly when incensed," Laurel admitted, dropping the pretense that they were discussing someone else. "I don't know if I always mean what I say, though I know for certain that I never mean to hurt someone's feelings. I think that when I am hurt deeply, I assume the worst and blurt that out, expecting the person to defend himself against my accusation. But instead I make things worse. It's probably very difficult to be close to me…"

Embedded in her little speech were the words  _I'm sorry_ , which she had yet to utter in full. Tommy reached forward and gave her hand a little squeeze.

"Your father did say you would have been a great lawyer were you male," he nodded gravely, knowing that the onslaught of jokes were an unspoken  _I forgive you_ that she would understand. "The King's Bench lost a valuable colleague the day you were born a girl. I myself lost the opportunity to have a fighting chance for the day I eventually have a writ of trespass taken out against me, for breaching the king's peace by engaging in all manner of unsavoury activities. My eventual transportation for my crimes is entirely on your head, Laurel. How dare you be a girl?"

Laurel could not help the large, silly grin that appeared on her face. "How do you know," she asked, "that I would not have joined the church, if I was born male? You yourself raised the plight of the poor as one of my passions. Surely you cannot hold me to account for all the prayers I would have said for you."

Tommy placed a hand on his heart, his face the picture of despair. "Oh my soul! I am damned!"

She swatted him and they burst into laughter just as the hack drew to a stop. Emerging from the vehicle, she stopped short as she recognised their surroundings.

"This isn't Mayfair," she pointed out to Tommy.

"I'm not about to let the entire  _ton_ see you exit a hack with me, with no chaperone to buffer the scandalous nature of it. Let's return separately, and I'll call upon you for tea if you don't have anything planned for today." The door opened to reveal her maid Joanna, who bore being dragged around London by her mistress with forced forbearance. He offered a hand to her to ease her ascent into her hired vehicle, notwithstanding the fact that Laurel was a tall woman who normally did not need the help.

She took his hand. "I do need to talk to you about accompanying me to Bristol."

Tommy gave her a questioning look.

"I think I may have found Sara."

* * *

Felicity thumbed the pages of her dictionary impatiently. It was imperative that they set off immediately, and so it was ordained by the universe that her mother be late.

She turned to examine the packed valises lying by the door, mentally cataloguing their contents. A tingling flush of warmth touched her cheeks and belly when she remembered her red shoes and what had happened the last time she had worn them.

 _No._ Felicity stood up and began pacing the room.  _This was entirely his fault._ She would not have to leave if not for him. She would not think upon that incident, nor - worse - the feelings which it produced within her.

The door to her room opened and in came her mother in a yellow dress, her eyes shining with excitement.

"Oh Felicity, you should have been down for breakfast!" Donna exclaimed the moment she laid eyes on her daughter. "You won't believe who has just joined the party -"

"Mother," Felicity interrupted. "We need to leave. Now."

A look of pure confusion crossed Donna's features. "But we just arrived. I thought the invitation was for the whole week."

They were not exactly at Slade Wilson's house party by invitation, but Felicity had not explained the circumstances to her mother when announcing that they would be attending, and she was not about to now.

"Yes, but now we need to go to somewhere else. I have packed our things. Here's your bonnet and your pelisse, mother. Will you be needing your parasol as well, or shall I put it away?"

"I don't understand," Donna shook her head. "Did something happen? Are you well?"

Felicity flicked a glance at the clock on the wall. Donna would not rest until she had an explanation of sorts, and she searched her mind for an excuse that would be close to the truth. "I met a man," she blurted, and then mentally kicked herself. It was the truth, which was important, because Felicity was not good at lying, but also guaranteed to delay their journey, because of how her mother would react.

"But that's absolutely wonderful!" Donna cried, leaping to catch her daughter's hands in her own.

"No," Felicity groaned. "Not wonderful. Not wonderful at all. Anyway that is why we need to leave."

Donna stopped short, suspicion rife in her frown. "Did someone say you were a…" She trailed off, but both women knew to what she referred: a loose woman, one of easy virtue. "Felicity, has anyone treated you in an inappropriate manner at this party?"

"No!" she said quickly, suppressing her memories of what  _had_  happened. Ordinarily it was not farfetched to imagine a man assuming that the daughter of Donna Smoak was a hussy. But she knew her mother would insist on confronting the person and giving him a dressing-down if she believed that Felicity had been treated without respect.

What had happened last night was not a question of respect but of self-preservation.

Donna looked more confused than ever. "So why are we leaving?"

A knock was heard before Felicity could respond. Donna let go of her hands and opened the door, her face brightening upon laying eyes on the visitor.

"As I was saying, Felicity, you won't believe who has joined the party! May I present my daughter to you, your grace?"

Standing at the door was the one person she wished most to avoid: the man who had kissed her last night.

* * *

Oliver gave Donna Smoak his best smile, knowing the effect it produced when combined with the dark scheme of his clothes. The beginnings of a bruise appearing on his cheek only added roguish charm, something for which he should probably thank the woman who caused the injury.

She appeared to be stunned at seeing him now. Under the daylight streaming in from the window, he could see that her hair was a shade of blonde close to her mother's, and that her eyes were such a bright blue that even the spectacles perched upon her nose could not distract from the intelligence lurking behind their gleam.

No, it was the deep shade of pink her lips were that would lead his thoughts away from her eyes down a more wicked path.

"I was hoping you could be persuaded to allow me to accompany you and your daughter on a walk about the grounds this afternoon," he said.

"Certainly," Donna said quickly, just as Felicity said, "Absolutely not." They exchanged glances.

"My daughter can be shy," Donna put in. Oliver saw that he should focus on charming the mother before he could talk to the daughter.

"Perhaps if I had the opportunity to introduce myself properly…" he trailed off on purpose. "Shall I order for tea for three to be sent down to the drawing room?"

Donna beamed. "That would be most thoughtful, your grace. I will send Felicity down first, if you could pardon a little tardiness on my part, your grace."

At that the younger woman gave a very pointed glare to her mother.

"In twenty minutes then," Oliver pressed a kiss to Donna's knuckles, adding a flourish to his bow before he turned to stride down the corridor.

There were packed valises in the room, he noted, recalling its contents as he committed the event to memory. His F. M. Smoak was trying to effect an escape.

As he gave instructions for tea to a maid he chanced upon in his descent, he noticed that her eyes were lingering involuntarily on the bruise that marked his cheek, just below his eye. He touched a hand to it, a small smile on his lips.

Last night the servants that had discovered them had taken some time to react, clearly shocked at finding a man not their master in a most scandalous embrace with a woman in the study. At their silence Oliver had wrapped a hand around the woman's ankle to drape her leg around his waist, while pressing his body against hers. The corresponding low sound that he made at the back of his throat was not disguised, ruse as it was, it did feel  _that_  good.

Finally there was an embarrassed, "I beg your pardon!" before the door was slammed shut.

Without some reluctance, Oliver disengaged himself from the warm form between him and the bookcase. He had placed a hand on her nape to protect her head from impact when he had put her on the bookshelf; he now cradled her face with that same hand as her senses returned to her.

"Are you all right, madam?"

He could not see her face clearly in the darkness that shrouded them, could not detect the colour of her eyes or ascertain the exact shade of her hair, though he reckoned he would always remember what her every curve felt like against his body.

That was the last thought he had before she decked him in the face with a heavy tome and fled the room. Oliver had looked at the book she had hit him with as he held a hand to his cheek.

It was the completed works of Shakespeare, a book as heavy as it was extensive in scope.

He had to find and apologise to her tomorrow morning; it was likely she was an innocent, given the way she had frozen when he kissed her. But he first extracted the file that Slade Wilson kept under his name and committed to memory its contents – a series of dates and numbers that he would think about in private – before returning to his room for some rest, his previous mood completely dissipated by the memories of his encounter.

Diggle had arrived in the morning as per their agreement, and Oliver sent him down to find the identity of the woman while he bathed.

"Her name is Felicity," Diggle reported upon returning, his back to Oliver. "Felicity Smoak. She arrived with her mother, Donna, two days ago. They didn't bring a ladies' maid, and the housemaid helping them dress said that the younger woman is something of a reclusive bluestocking. Apparently she spends most of the party's activities reading in the library. A translator, or so the master of this house says."

Oliver sat straighter in his bath. "What are her initials?"

"Believe it or not, 'F. M. S.' Do you think she's Felix Sherwood, your grace?"

 _It was definitely plausible_ , Oliver now thought, as the woman in question entered the drawing room, leaving the door wide open in view of the fact that she was unchaperoned and unmarried. She had changed from the travelling gown she wore earlier to a conservative day dress with long, elbow-length sleeves that been in fashion when he was younger. A fichu had been tucked most determinedly into her bodice, obscuring her décolletage from his view.

"Miss Felicity Smoak," Oliver gave her a pleasant smile, standing as she stepped into the room. "My name is…"

"I know who you are, my lord," she cut in, before blanching at her incorrect address of him.

"It's all right," he said graciously, "To be honest, I am used being merely 'my lord' and for the longest of times, 'your grace' meant my father."

"Right, but he's dead. I mean he drowned and you…" she put in, and turned paler when she realised what she had said, throwing a hand up as if to halt her succession of verbal mistakes, "…are now in this drawing room listening to me babble…which will end." She mumbled something that sounded vaguely like a countdown, plopping most ungracefully into the seat before him.

If Oliver was to be perfectly honest, he was very amused. Felicity M. Smoak was a most fascinating woman to watch speak, and he was struggling to maintain his composure so as to preserve her pride. "I had the pleasure of meeting your lovely mother this morning," he said, truthfully. "She mentioned that you had a gift for translation, and I was having difficulty reading one of the messages my father left behind – he liked testing me. I was hoping you could help me, which is why I sought this introduction."

It had now been fifteen whole minutes Donna had left them alone. The woman was up to something, but it suited Oliver's purposes perfectly. He reached into his coat and drew out one of his father's papers, which now showed its message fairly clearly, if not for the stains on the sheet.

Felicity took it from him, her begrudging interest giving way to outright suspicion. "If this was one of your father's messages," she said, "then why is it covered in blood stains?" Her head was tilted and she glanced at him over her glasses.

That particular sheet of paper was the one Oliver had found in the coat his father had been wearing before Robert was killed.

Oliver tried to give her a reassuring smile. "It isn't blood. I like to use red ink to write, and I spilled a pot by accident on my papers. I, uh, can be clumsy."

She looked at him as if he was crazy, with pity and disbelief. Oliver widened his smile.

"I would be most grateful if you could discover anything that my late father had left for me," he said, emphasising 'late father'. "Can you let me know of your progress when I return for our walk? I am suddenly reminded that I have to speak to our host."

Felicity was reading his paper, a furrow appearing on her brow. He took that as assent.

"Do send my regards to your mother, Miss Smoak," he bowed and took his leave, his mission with her accomplished for now. Upon learning her name Oliver had decided that the best way to test her was to have her believe him the consummate unthinking rake. If she would not help the Arrow, perhaps she could be charmed into helping the Duke of Starling.

That left him with one final task to complete the investigation of last night's findings. He had run over the figures from Slade's file and the dates raised questions he wanted answers to. He found Slade Wilson standing in the ballroom, a rapier in his hand. The last guest that he had dispatched lay panting on the ground, his own rapier hanging loosely from his fingers.

"Oliver!" Slade cried cheerfully. "Pick your blade and come and show me what you've learnt since I last saw you."

It was well-known in the  _ton_ that Slade had developed the practice of sparring with any challenger first thing in the morning, though guests who eschewed the sport were allowed to head for breakfast in a different room. A group of his guests were standing round a table laden with food, watching the action with rapt attention. Another table where a collection of blades and masks were laid out carefully was positioned near the door by which Oliver had entered the ballroom.

"But of course," Oliver said obligingly, reaching for a foil and positioning a protective mask over his features.

Slade ripped the mesh of steel wire off. "I find I am getting bored of seeing through this. What say you we up the stakes, kid? For our spectators here." Said spectators cheered as he pulled off the blossom on the tip of his own foil.

Oliver did the same cautiously. "First to draw blood wins?"

"And one item of clothing removed for each point scored," put in Slade.

"En-garde," Oliver said, adopting the fencing stance.

Slade moved quickly, and Oliver found that he was on the defense, with no openings to launch any offensive attacks.

"Whatever happened to your eye, kid?" asked Slade, just before a lunge.

"A very special woman," replied Oliver, as he allowed Slade to score the first point of the battle. As per the rules they had negotiated he stripped his coat off.

"Are you sure you don't want to take the cravat off as well? You might feel more comfortable."

"You'll have to try harder to make me do so," Oliver said as he reassumed the starting position.

"So what brings you to my humble party? I seem to recall that you failed to respond in good time," Slade said, executing a  _bind_  and forcing Oliver's blade to a different line.

"I have some questions to ask you, Slade."

"Oh? Pray tell me what they are."

The file labelled 'Starling' in Slade's study was likely to be a bill. The dates began after 1789, but the ones that had caught Oliver's attention were the penultimate and final dates.

June the fifteenth, 1807 was the night the Starling carriage had met its accident and Oliver and Robert sent to their deaths. April the nineteenth, 1812 was the night Oliver had been attacked after returning from White's.

"Are you still in the business of war, Slade? Or is it all culture and the arts now?" When Oliver had first met Joseph 'Slade' Wilson, he had been a mercenary leading a band of men.

Slade laughed. "An aristocrat who would speak of commerce at a party – you never cease to amaze me. Next thing you'll say is that you're a democrat."

Oliver smiled grimly. They were both down to their shirt-sleeves now, and Oliver no particular wish to expose his naked torso to the guests. There were too many scars he had that would raise questions he did not want answered. He needed to find Slade at a more private place to question him properly.

As he considered what was the course of action most likely to secure his win the doors burst opened behind him and in stepped a tall woman, her long dark hair arranged artfully upon her head in large curls. She exuded sophistication and mastery, grace and elegance in the very tilt of her head, the way she held herself.

"I apologise for my tardiness, Mr Wilson," she all but announced, an enigmatic smile playing on her fine features. "There was a small situation in Moscow that had to be resolved."

It was the tenth of May, the month in which William Shakespeare had labeled that when the wind shook buds darling and drab alike. But the woman was decked out in furs and diamonds, and every inch of her body was covered, even as she extended a gloved hand to Oliver.

"You must be the Duke of Starling I have been hearing about," she said. She had a most exotic accent, not quite Russian nor anything Oliver had heard before.

He pressed his lips to her knuckles, cataloguing the details of her entrance in his mind carefully so he could ascertain her identity with Anatoli or Diggle's contacts later.

"Will you care to make the introductions, Slade?" another guest, who had been admiring the woman, asked.

"Certainly. This is Countess Rochev," said Slade, "or is it more accurate to say Rocheva?"

"I don't particularly mind. You English can never quite wrap your minds around Yelizaveta Lyetainichna Rocheva." The countess set her eyes firmly on Oliver, her satisfaction visible in the curl of her lip as she declared, "But you, duke, must call me Isabel."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been told that the patronymic used does not exist and it doesn't - I was getting creative based with Google translate and what I read about patronymics on the internet. One of these days I will pick up Russian, but until then I apologise for the linguistically horrible attempt to have a shout-out to Summer Glau's name by incorporating Summer in Isabel Rochev's full name here. Google Translate and I are very sorry for the inaccuracy. As well as for implying that some Russian parents named their male kid Summer and expected the kid to grow up without being bullied.


	9. Rank

She found him in the stables. Shirtsleeves rolled up, Roy reached for the currycomb he had left on the shelf, replacing it with the brush he had been using.

"Oy've a messidge from the gent."

Roy regarded at Sin's black-clad figure. Her face bore the dust of travel, as did her bluntly shorn locks of black hair.

"'e wants you to look some gel. 'er name's 'elena Ber'inelli."

Was that the duke's old mistress? Roy had recollections of the duke discussing that name with Diggle. Diggle, if he remembered correctly, did not like the Bertinelli woman.

"Did 'e say anything about Donna Smoak?"

"'e's found her, if that's what yer mean. The gent ain't say nuffin' about Donna Smoak."

Roy scowled, setting the currycomb to the mare's back again. "Return to yer post till 'e says otherwise then. I'll get Kory on this."

He pulled the currycomb through the mare's coat, occasionally stepping back to check his handiwork. It was the stablehand's duty to ready his master's horses for their daily exercise, and many a stablehand waged his professional pride on the gleam of a horse's back.

Sin had not moved from where she stood.

Roy lowered the currycomb. "Anything else to report?" he asked.

"Nuffin'. Only the Roy 'arper I knew would ne'er be a gent's servant like such," came her reply.

"I like 'orses," Roy reminded her, altering his accent to better match hers. To better match what it had been. "Wouldn't've been a good 'orse thief if I didn't."

"Is that what you call this, then? I've 'eard you talk to the gent, y'know. Yer accent gets ow fancy-like. You work longer than you ever did on the streets, and you don't even need to work as a stable boy anymore, not wif'a blunt 'e pays us."

The Duke of Starling had indeed increased his pay for every new observer recruited to tail someone, so much that he slept and ate as the other stablehands did, when not investigating a person, but did little and was paid double. Roy's newfound circumstances had perplexed and confounded his fellow stablehands, it arguably being a threat to the hierarchy of servitude civilised England was built upon.

"Go back to Cambridgeshire, Sin. I don't pay you to observe me."

"Cor, you even talk like one of 'em now! So much fer all the yarn yer used to spin 'bout bein' part gypsy and ownin' nuffink this side o' death."

Roy turned to face her, and she must has sensed his ire, for she threw up her hands, stepping backwards as she said, "I'm goin', I'm goin'."

Satisfied, he resumed his task, concentrating on the repetitive movement instead of the way her words echoed round the stable.

"Only as a frien' to another, 'arper, no amount of polishin' will make 'em quality to fuck the likes of us."

Roy twisted and threw the currycomb at her retreating form, the strains of her laughter growing dimmer as he waited for the rage he felt to dissipate.

He did no longer need to act as a stablehand, particularly after the duke had instructed the stablemaster that Roy would be running personal errands for the duchy and thus must not be disturbed if found absent. But then, he never had to subject himself to the humiliation of service to begin with, once he found out he was not going to swing for his attempted theft. He always had the option of running away, realistically speaking.

There had been only one reason that prompted him to bother staying in the first place.

His heart leapt as he caught the pattering of footsteps, a rhythm that he recognised. Lady Thea Queene emerged at the door and came to her horse, dressed in an elaborate get-up of purple he could not describe save to say she looked resplendent as ever.

"Were you talking to someone, boy?" she asked, her tone imperious.

"Only 'orses here," he replied, remembering to aspirate again only by the third word. He resisted the urge to obscure his face with a hand as he struggled for total composure.

A delicate sniff was his only reply, followed by a brisk, "Well, aren't you going to help me up?"

She held a hand out, and Roy stared at the smooth leather of her calfskin gloves for a moment before he said, "As you wish, my lady." He took her hand and she leaned her weight into that one point of contact as she mounted her horse.

Roy led them out and then returned with another one for himself, his clothes set to rights. The duchess had given strict instructions to the effect that Lady Thea was never to go riding alone, and so a groom typically accompanied her each time she wanted to exercise her mare herself. He barely managed to get onto the horse before she began charging towards the direction of Hyde Park.

Lady Thea never knew temperance when it came to her horsemanship. Roy rode hard and caught up, putting a hand on her reins.

"You'll get me into trouble with her grace," he said, as their steeds slowed into a trot.

She held his gaze, her green eyes dancing with mischief. "Someone's in high dudgeon. Care to share why?"

Roy said nothing and reassumed proper riding posture on his seat. There was silence for a couple of minutes, before Thea declared loudly, "I had a marvelous time at Almack's yesterday. I danced all night long, and my dress was complimented upon by everyone present."

He made no visible response and she scowled.

"You're no fun to talk to today, boy. Why, Lord Chase yesterday was most attentive, fetching me whatever I so desired. You could do well to learn from him." She threw her head to the side, spotting other members of the aristocracy parading down Rotten Row, as was  _de rigeur_  during this hour.

Raising a hand in greeting, she approached a group of women while Roy lingered nearby, waiting for his lady to finish. This was the third time she had referred to Lord Chase before him, and he contemplated assigning someone to tail him.

 _Gar? Perhaps Jay._  Jason Todd had no compulsions about using violence, and Roy could not explain a stablehand striking a lordship but there was little surprise when a footpad wielded a large stick.

Thea returned to his side. "I'm tired," she pouted. "Let's go home."

"As you wish, my lady."

She continued talking as they returned to Queene House, dropping names and dress descriptions. Roy usually paid close attention to her, partly because the duke often required him to investigate members of the aristocracy and his reading was not quick enough to make checking his tattered copy of  _Debrett's_  a productive course of action. He had procured that outdated volume shortly after he commenced his employment in Queene House, struggling slowly to make out words as he searched for the entry that would remind him of his place.

"…I believe Lady Harriet has designs upon Lord Chase," Thea lowered her voice, as she waited for Roy to dismount and help her down. Lady Harriet, he remembered belatedly, was the daughter of a baron that had upset Thea at the beginning of the Season by calling her a 'Fatherless, brotherless hoyden' behind her back.

"It's just such a shame that he asked my mother when would be a good time to call upon my brother this week." She had an air of triumph about her as she finished with, "She's going to be so upset when I become Lady Chase – I am fully expecting a proposal before the end of the Season. What do you say to that, boy? Will you come with me to Chase House or will you stay here?"

Roy stared at her. The  _Debrett's_  entry he had read time and time again came to mind, a reminder of his place:  _Lady Thea Dearden Queene, born to the thirteenth Duke of Starling…_ He was glad his voice remained neutral as he said, "I am grateful for your consideration, my lady. I will think upon the matter."

Thea regarded him gravely for a few seconds, her expression indecipherable. Then she turned abruptly and left, leaving him with, "I'll see you tomorrow, boy. Work hard or I'll leave you behind after all."

He took in a deep breath.  _Helena Bertinelli_ , he reminded himself. That was the only woman he had to think of, for the duke had instructed him to do so. He returned the horses to their respective stalls and gave them a quick brush before heading out to the streets.

* * *

It appeared that the Duke of Starling had acquired a new woman. Donna was not particularly pleased with the way the Countess Rocheva had hung onto the duke's every word and arm, having inserted herself into their company for the proposed walk the duke had forced upon the Smoaks.

"She never once let go of his arm," fumed Donna. "You should have been there, especially when she said, 'Such a shame that the pathway is too small for a company of three' in that silly accent of hers!"

Felicity ignored the indignant expression on her mother's face and made the finishing touches on the parchment she had been working on all afternoon. She had politely excused herself from the duke's invitation, citing a sudden headache by way of a missive sent only at the last possible moment, to prevent her mother foiling her plans. Laying down her pen, she thought of her debts.

Slade Wilson had not yet heard of her attempt to leave, and she hoped that the guinea she had slipped the sole maid who witnessed her unpacking was sufficient to preserve its secrecy. Fingering the folds of her gown nervously, she paid little heed to her surroundings.

She had completed five of his requests since her duplicity was discovered some two months back. That meant she still owed five hundred pounds, having only dealt with the exorbitant interest rate Slade placed on his silence. His little requests were more and more extravagant, from asking for letters to be written in a particular hand to wholesale reproductions of medieval artefacts. And then he required her presence at this party of his, where she had to work under his surveillance.

"Felicity, are you even listening to me? The woman is going to take the duke's attention off you, and you're not even bothered in the slightest!"

"I spent the afternoon working, mother," she indicated the document that lay before her on the writing-desk. "Need I remind you that I am the sole breadwinner in this family?"

Donna huffed. "There's no need to be so arch with your tone, young lady," she said. "You know as I do how rare it is for a man like the Duke of Starling to pay you any attention. He asked of your hobbies during the walk, you know."

Felicity frowned. She believed that the Duke of Starling sought to play the careless rake before her, admittedly to rather successful effect, and she would have been fooled had his lies not been downright terrible, among other things.

 _Clumsy, indeed._ As if any person who took one look at that body would believe for a second that he could be anything but athletic, if not lethal.

She traced the piece of paper that he had handed over to her in the morning with a hand, before recalling that it was covered in bloodstains and gingerly returning her hand back to her lap. Half an hour with it had yielded the observation that she was missing something to decode it, an essential reference point that the designer of the code had always intended. She had tried using a bible and even  _Debrett's_  as the reference, but she highly doubted the previous Duke of Starling intended his son to know that Abishua was the father of Bukki, Bukki the father of Uzzi.  _Debrett's_ had produced even little sense when the code was applied to it.

"I am being realistic, mother," she said. "His grace is one of the highest peers in the land. I am…well." Felicity could not even claim the identity of a nobody from nowhere, to be elevated to high status by an advantageous and surprising fairytale match. In the eyes of his world, she was Donna Smoak's daughter.

And in the eyes of the law, she was a criminal, counting among her crimes forgery and the responsibility for devising and selling secret codes to various individuals across Europe.

"A mother can dream," Donna said fiercely. "Besides, he has friends in high places. It can never be disadvantageous to be friendly with a duke."

Felicity returned her attention to the parchment. She had to raise the rest of the money she owed, and she was not going to be a fancy gent's mistress. That was the promise she made to herself ever since she was ten, when one of her mother's colleagues admonished her for allowing her eyesight to deteriorate.

If the world wanted to put a value on Felicity Smoak, then it had to contend with her mind first.

"I'll join you all for dinner," she sighed. "But I want to work in silence for the rest of the afternoon."

Appeased, Donna grinned. "Shall I arrange for the maid to prepare the red dress? You look ravishing in red. The duke will not be able to look away if you wear red."

Felicity ignored her and opened her dictionary, as a cue for her mother to leave. She managed to begin her sixth copy of a rare fourteenth century poem celebrating Mary Magdalene, when the door to the small private room Slade had allowed her to use as a study of sorts opened.

There stood Lord Oliver Queene, Fourteenth Duke of Starling.

"Don't you knock?" she threw out, hastily pulling out another sheet of paper to cover her work as she rose to her feet. One did not exactly advertise their criminal activity to a duke.

He made a show of examining their surroundings in mock horror.

"Very funny, your grace," she said, before he could make a comment about how it was not a ladies' retiring room.

He gave her a roguish smirk then, one that she was sure he must have practiced many times before a mirror, or else she had a legitimate bone of contention with his Maker. No man should be born with the ability to produce such a look naturally.

"Please, call me Oliver. I came to see if you've progressed on the paper I passed to you this morning."

She was supposed to respond by allowing him the use of her name, a privilege that had to be extended in kind given the disparity in their social class and his making the first move. "Call me personal codebreaker for Oliver Queene," she muttered, before saying loudly, "It would make me most happy for you to address me by my given name."

"Felicity," he said slowly, flashing her a grin. He had heard her comment, there was no doubt of it. "Felicity."

"I've examined your document, your grace," she said quickly, before wincing and correcting herself. "Oliver."

"Yes, Felicity?"

The man was clearly enjoying the discomfort she experienced whenever she heard him utter her name. He pronounced each syllable clearly, not because of his public school accent, but rather definitely out of a perverseness in watching her reaction, rolling every sound in his mouth before it left his perfectly sculpted lips.

She tore her eyes away from his mouth.

"You need a separate point of reference, typically a book of some sorts. I've tried whatever books may typically be found in an aristocrat's library, but to no avail. Was there any book in particular that your father might have used?" A thought occurred to her then. "Shakespeare!"

"Shakespeare?" he sounded confused.

"Yes, the playwright. You know – Hamlet, King Lear, Julius Caesar?"

"I know who Shakespeare is," he managed. "Studied far too much of him at Eton."

An awkward pause ensued, before she blurted, "I know our host has a copy of his collected works. It's probably still in his study where I left it."

He touched his fingers to the arch of his cheek then, a tiny smile reaching his lips as he said, "I do believe you are right."

Felicity closed her eyes, the memory of how she had hit him on their first meeting replaying in her mind. She heard him speak before she could utter an apology.

"I'm very sorry for the circumstances of our first meeting, Felicity." His voice was soft as he continued, "Please know that I would never have taken such liberties with your person if not for the exigency of discovery."

Her eyes flew open. "May I ask what you were doing in Slade's private study? I was in the midst of translation, you see, and needed a dictionary. What was your business?"

His expression was hooded, his gaze steady as he said, "Searching." She sensed he would not say for whom or for what no matter how hard she pressed him.

"Did you find what you were looking for, your – I mean, Oliver?"

He looked directly into her eyes. "Oh, certainly." They stood like that for a couple of moments, she unable to move or break eye contact, until he finally shifted and said, "Will you be able to translate what my father intended if I present you with a couple of books? And other papers styled similarly."

Felicity hesitated. She did not labour for free, and yet there was something incredibly crass about raising the subject of her fees to a duke when both of them were invited to the same party.

"My solicitor will contact yours about compensation," he said, comprehension in his gaze.

"Please direct all mail to number twenty-four, Bond Street," she breathed in relief, "Mr Allen will arrange for it to be delivered to my solicitor." Barry would know where to find a solicitor that would not ask too many questions about Felicity's activities. "I'll ask Mr Wilson for his copy of Shakespeare as soon as possible."

"May I inquire as to how you are acquainted with Barry Allen, Felicity?" His tone was meant to convey curiousity, but he seemed more suspicious in his facial expression than anything.

She bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. That was a whole story in itself. "He's a good friend. He will keep our arrangement a secret if you so desire. I mean, I would. Keep our arrangement a secret, I mean."

The side of his mouth quirked upwards and Felicity realised the double entendre of her words. "Just to clarify," she said, "when I speak of this arrangement between us, it does not and will not include… I mean to say, that you and I will not…"

There was no disguising his mirth as he replied, "It will be as you desire, Felicity. Will you excuse me until dinner?"

She nodded, and he left, leaving her to calculate the amount she could overcharge him for decoding his father's paper. It would not be fair to hold him to the whole five hundred pounds, but she could surely charge forty with little impact on her conscience.

Keeping appearances was everything in London, debt itself the common cliché of a problem that faced all walks of society, but the Duke of Starling seemed as wealthy as he looked. He wore the latest fashion in silks and leather, and could she not recall her mother mentioning that he had twenty thousand a year?

He was rich, she told herself. He could well afford to keep Felicity and Donna out of the criminal world's version of debtor's prison, or from being at the mercy of Slade Wilson's mysterious client, or from Slade Wilson himself.

She returned to her room to find the red gown her mother had mentioned laid out, the maid that was to help her fasten the back absent. The dress was more accurately described as red satin, trimmed with a white silk gauze net embellished with a ruché rim. Little embroidered flowers lined the edges of its matching red slippers, an extravagance that Felicity had allowed herself just before she found out that Slade did not allow his associates to renege on agreements, even if she had committed a unilateral mistake as to the exact nature of the endeavour at the formation of their contract.

The maid entered the room and began helping her dress. Felicity took a deep breath as she felt her stays being tightened, muttering a grateful thank you to her mother's close friend, Lady Hamilton, for popularising raised waistlines in England and so saving her from having to wear constricting long stays.

She owned no jewels to adorn her neck, having pawned the sole string of pearls she had retained from her mother's collection of suitor's gifts the moment she decided to pay for Slade's silence. The man she owed looked at her with approval as she approached the party outside the dinner hall.

"I see you are considering my offer, Felicity," he said, referring to his proposal that she give him sole access to her coding skills in the future and he would forget the code she had devised and then sought to deny him. As long as she continued rejecting him, she had to pay for his silence whenever his client asked whom she was. "I hope you will enjoy the nude dancers at tonight's dinner."

"How rank and gross in nature," she replied softly, not bothering to hide her hostility. Let Slade's guests speak of how she had no liking for him; apart from being a mercenary and art dealer, he was also a blackmailer that had threatened her mother.

He threw his head back in laughter, the side of his face on which he wore an eye patch to her. "This kitten has claws, my friends!"

The Duke of Starling looked at her with interest, turning away from the brunette woman on his arm that had to be the countess Donna had denigrated at length. Felicity headed to her mother's side, waiting for them to be arranged by rank to enter the dining room.

The guest list was considered by all present as they fumbled to take their places, before a servant approached Slade and whispered a report to his master. Exasperation crossed Slade's features, and he commanded all attention as he announced, "I'm afraid I will have to call off tonight's celebrations. I've just been told that the prime minister was shot in the House of Commons."

A male guest swooned, and Felicity's mind raced as disbelief worked its way through the crowd. Perhaps she could escape, if there was sufficient confusion as guests sought to rush back to London and others tried to return to their country estates.

She looked meaningfully at Donna and mouthed behind her fan,  _We have to go_. There could only be one chance for escape, lest Slade's wrath descended on them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so much fun writing this I wonder if it shows! A note: I am aware that Almack's balls were a Wednesday event and that Spencer Perceval was assassinated on a Monday, which means that four days have suddenly become but a day in The Dark Prodigal. Let's assume that Almack's was happy to hold their ball on Sunday evening.
> 
> This particular chapter required me to look into horse care, profanities in use during the period and Regency fashion. Felicity's dress was inspired by the Empress Josephine's town dress, and the nude dancing at dinner was inspired from reading about the real Lady Hamilton. I looked up the profanities, recalling Jamie's asking Claire what "fuck" was in Outlander, and I'm not very sure that it was indeed common during the Regency era, but since I've already played ducks and drakes with the dates let's ignore that if I am wrong, shall we? I made references here to Roy Harper's character of colour status in the comic books (though sorry to comic book fans that he's not Native American in this incarnation but part-Gypsy, like a certain two leads in Lisa Kleypas' Hathaways), as well as his Teen Titans involvement - yes, Kory is Starfire, Gar is Beast Boy and Jason Todd is Red Hood.
> 
> Kudos to you if you got The Princess Bride allusion, and I also hope you loved the "Don't you knock?" and Oliver does not get Shakespeare jokes from the show.
> 
> Lastly, thanks to my brother who stayed up reading that first scene in this chapter with me over and over again so he could tell me what Sin and Roy would sound like with reference to terms like speech assimilation and hypercorrection. We actually went over those lines four times where I would read in a British RP accent, he would render it in Cockney, and then I'd try my best to imitate him as I spelled it and argue with him over the balance between accuracy and readability. Sorry if it was indeed unreadable, we did our best! The final time we would read it in a general American accent because I wanted to ensure as little confusion as possible when reading my rendering of Sin's cockney accent. Accents were a key indicator of origins during this time and I didn't want to keep telling you how Oliver observes that Roy speaks better than his background without showing it.
> 
> Any and all mistakes in this are solely mine. We will revert to Oliver's point-of-view once I stop trawling the internet in the hopes that some like-minded individual photoshopped Stephen Amell such that he's wearing Regency garb so I can use it for my story's cover, and once I get over the fact that my own story fails the Bechdel test as of now (will rectify as soon as possible in story's narrative).


	10. Disclosure

"I assume you've heard the news," Oliver said, tugging at his cravat.

Diggle confirmed his suspicions by raising a small slip of paper Oliver guessed was a missive. "The shooter has been apprehended," he said. "A man by the name of John Bellingham."

"I need to return to Queene House posthaste. My mother will want to see me safe at home and I don't want a fuss made when I keep late hours tomorrow. Tell Roy's associate not to let Felicity Smoak out of her sight – I've already said this to you before dinner, but she's the one the Arrow's been looking for."

Diggle nodded, handing to him the change of clothes he required for his journey back to London. Oliver raised a brow in question as he stepped out of his shoes and pulled on a riding boot.

"Speak freely, Diggle. This wouldn't be much of a partnership if we kept our thoughts from each other. You should probably also just address me by my given name when we're not with company." He had thought about allowing Diggle to call him 'Starling', as was common among other peers, but the full implication of having assumed his father's title was especially poignant when addressed by it.

 _He had no right to be the Duke of Starling_.

Diggle shot him a skeptical look, letting out a sigh and saying, "I've just been thinking that it really wears me out no end the way you refer to yourself in the third person like that."

Oliver paused and lifted his eyes from his other boot to meet Diggle's for a moment, before uttering a single, "Well."

"Bags will be ready in an hour," Diggle said quickly, putting away the discarded shoes. "Will your grace be requiring anything else?"

Oliver rubbed his fingers together in habitual instinct, thinking. There was still the matter of confronting Slade about the dates in his 'Starling' file, something that he had to do before he left the premises, because there was no saying when he would have the opportunity to do so again. After all, Slade was not a frequent inhabitant of London.

But how did one begin to question one's friend about their father's murder? Oliver was not sure if he wanted to lose the connection completely through forcible cross-examination or do a less than thorough job of questioning. His last abortive attempt had been ham-fisted, born out of a compulsion to find the truth quickly rather than methodically.

"I have to ask an old friend a potentially awkward question," he said quietly, running his index finger over the pad of his thumb. "Slade Wilson may or may not know have something to do with my first attack and my father's murder."

Diggle reached into his coat and produced a pistol, holding it out to Oliver hilt-first in an offer. "You probably already know I served in the Flanders Campaign from ninety-three."

Oliver nodded.

"You probably also know that my brother Andy served in the West Indies. We joined the military around the same time, having been recommended by Sir George Yonge, whose estate in Colyton was where my parents were serving."

The baronet had been Secretary at War and head of the War Department from eighty-three to ninety-four, Oliver thought. Sir George Yonge had on several occasions joined Robert and Moira for dinners at Queene House when Oliver was young enough to dine in the nursery. He could scarcely recall how the man looked or sounded.

Diggle's face had grown solemn, his tone approaching the funereal as he stated, "I…wanted Andy to go to Flanders. It was the Duke of York and Albany that was in command of the British contingent there; it was always going to be safer. I told Sir George that Andy had to be safe, right before he helped draft the letters that spoke of our volunteering."

There was a long-drawn silence before Oliver prompted him with, "What happened?"

Diggle looked at his hand, which still held his offered pistol. His hold was tight, the blood rushing to the tips of his fingers.

"Sir George has always been a servant of the state first, and everything else second. The West Indies required a boy younger and of smaller stature than I was, and so I went to Flanders while Andy went to Guadeloupe under General Charles Grey's command. He came back in ninety-eight a broken man having watched his friends die of disease or desertion; I returned in 1806 with the military record her grace saw after serving under General Arthur Wellesley in Flanders and India. Needless to say it was General Wellesley who arranged for my current occupation, though Sir George too played a part by turning up in Ripon when I first sought to turn it down."

Flanders had ended in disaster, while the Anglo-Mysore War had made a hero of Wellesley. It was the reason Moira always gave when questioned on why she had hired such a man to serve the duchy – Arthur Wellesley's reputation on the battlefields in Argaum and Gawilghur alone were enough to silence whomever had the audacity to question her hiring decisions.

Oliver held the barrel of the pistol loosely, pushing it gently back to Diggle, whose voice was hard as he finished, "I have never asked Sir George why he made that decision back in ninety-three, not the time when I first returned to Colyton six years ago, nor when Andy died a week after in Ripon.

"My point is, Oliver, that sometimes you need to ask yourself if you really want to know the answer to your questions first. If your friend, whom we both know was a mercenary in Crimea, was given an assignment he took, can you afford to turn him completely against you when his client is still giving him instructions?"

Oliver considered Diggle's words as he watched him replace his pistol where he usually kept it hidden in his coat, and gather up Oliver's evening dress to put it away. He was aware that John Diggle was a private man and that the details of that account were likely known to few men, particularly given the nature of his recent work for the War Office. It was a vote of support for Oliver himself, as emphasised by Diggle's use of his first name, and so he made the decision he had to with confidence, stepping forward to exit the room.

"John?" Oliver called, just before he passed the mahogany door to his guest chamber.

Diggle looked up in surprise at being addressed by his first name.

"Thank you, partner."

Oliver left in search of Slade Wilson.

* * *

The entire affair, from its outset to its current development, was efficiently producing in her an acute realisation of her flaws and shortcomings. These were not the musings of a woman lacking in self-esteem, but the logical conclusions drawn through scientific observation.

The evidence was chronological. Slade had begun his sustained exertion of pressure a month ago by sending a man to every house she owned, the message clear: there was no place in England she could run to.

When she wrote him a strongly-worded letter that she would not comply with their initial agreement, complete with the maxim  _ex turpi causa non oritur actio_ , Slade responded swiftly as well. The following day all enquiries originating from his extensive list of contacts in the criminal underworld sent to number twenty-four were addressed not to 'Felix Sherwood', the persona she had worked hard for close to a decade to establish, but 'F. M. Smoak'. Again the message was clear: he possessed more clout in the underworld than she ever did. And he could ruin her chances at employment easily.

She had sought to pay him back quickly then, sending out politely worded enquiries to all manner of past clients, as well as a not-so-politely worded message to Anatoli Knyazev about his Arrow friend – in her defense, that particular missive was the culmination of a fortnight's worth of unvented stress. She received a total of no replies from anyone involved in shady business, though the War Office was more than happy to have a problem solved at top speed for a premium, and that took care of the interest for the two hundred pound debt she owed for breaching her initial covenant. The rest she reckoned she could earn in a high-stakes game of faro or hazard.

Or so Felicity thought.

Slade was a master in cornering his victims, she conceded. One day he showed up at her home in Ely, bearing papers that were written by a very familiar hand.

"I'm afraid I must inform you that my friends are worried at your ability to continue playing such games, Miss Smoak," he had drawled in his husky voice, the cadence of his speech betraying his glee as he presented evidence of Donna's one indulgence, a vestige of her courtesan-days. His posture was lazy as he dealt the finishing blow, "As your friend I cannot but speak truthfully, and I fear that my offer of employment may be your only option in repaying me, a debt that I have kindly refrained from calling in up till now. What do you say, my dear Felicity – that is, I hope you don't mind my taking the liberty of addressing you by your first name?"

She crumpled the silk net of her skirt now as she thought of all the letters testifying to her mother's debts he held in his possession. Slade Wilson had bought up all of Donna's debts, which gave him the legal right to send her mother to debtor's prison. Felicity could imitate anyone's hand upon reading it once and was literate in twelve languages, but this was not a problem she could forge or translate her way out of. She did not have a sample of Slade's own handwriting so as to forge a discharge of all debts letter, try as she might to inquire about it. She could not teach her mother how to change her script, and so defend herself in a court of law by pleading that the notes were false. She could not even bring herself to tell her mother about the gravity of their situation, because she was terrified that Donna would go to confront Slade about the morality of his actions.

There was also the problem where Donna had absolutely no idea that Felicity's 'translation' trade was more accurately described as codebreaking, with an occasional dabbling in forging. Donna believed Felicity merely a linguistic genius who helped other people write letters to their foreign loves.

As she paced the corner of the parlour she had occupied ever since Slade's party of guests were sent there in the wake of the prime minister's assassination, she found herself admitting one more of her inadequacies: linguistic genius or not, Felicity Smoak was not much good at practical escapes.

Even a fool could recognise that this was an opportune time to bolt. But she could not think of how to effect a successful disappearance from Slade's purview beyond slipping into another person's carriage, a plan which would work if not for the fact that two fully-grown women could not fit into the compartment under the seat.

Felicity needed more time. She wanted to hide behind a text she could work with, to cover herself with words and syntax and to spend hours mulling over punctuation placement, instead of improvising a spontaneous escape plan and thinking about what she could not do. She raised her eyes to the painted plaster of the ceiling, resisting an urge to wring her hands.

"Miss Smoak, are you quite all right?"

It took a moment for her to identify the speaker.  _It was the doctor_ , she thought, a Raymond Palmer who had studied medicine despite hailing from a wealthy gentry family, and who spoke passionately of the sciences. They had played chess together on the second night of the party, and Felicity faintly remembered thinking then that he was the evidence of how eclectic Slade's guest list was.

His dark, expressive eyes were kind now, sympathetic even, as he indicated her hands with a nod of his head. "You've been…rubbing your index finger and thumb together since we've stepped into the room."

Felicity's attention followed his direction and sure enough, her fingers had been involuntarily engaged in a fidgeting motion, in mimicry of her idiosyncratic tendency to rub the pages of the dictionary she was utilising when thinking before an open book. She let out a mirthless laugh.

"I had not noticed, Dr Palmer."

"As I said, Miss Smoak, are you all right? Is it…the news about the late prime minister that has upset you?"

She stared into his expectant expression, his visage most patient and concerned. Then a wild idea appeared in her mind.  _The Palmers would take care of my mother if I asked_ , Felicity thought,  _possessing the wherewithal to keep a patient away from Slade Wilson's clutches_. If she claimed that her mother had a longstanding malady, a slight tendency towards hysteria that a calm environment would cure, it was possible to appeal to Dr Palmer's Asclepiad oath while keeping her mother in the dark about the direness of their circumstances. All in time for Felicity to clear up the mess and then forge her mother out of the bed rest Dr Palmer would prescribe.

"Dr Palmer," Felicity began, allowing herself to sound distraught even as she lowered her tone. "Your concern is most appreciated. I confess the…recent revelations have unsettled me somewhat, but my disquiet stems from a more longstanding malady."

He cocked his head to the side, intrigued. She bit her lip, dismay merging with the ever mounting panic in her as she realised she could not carry out the only concrete plan that had come to her mind thus far. Dr Palmer was a good man she would have to lie to, and what she would be doing to Donna was unfair and wrong.

"I've just never been fond of house parties," she said instead, despising how silly she sounded. "They can be too long-drawn and with the current news…"

Embarrassment and understanding reached his gaze, and he replied, as was required of good manners, "Of course. Naturally."

"Will you escort me to my mother's side?" she asked, holding out a hand to the crook of his elbow. He complied dutifully, before volunteering to read out a passage from the bible to the general company, while their host finished making arrangements for dinner to be served with less pomp than originally intended.

Felicity squeezed her mother's hand as she sank into the seat next to her.

"Posture," Donna hissed from the corner of her mouth, helping Felicity smooth over her skirts and patting her knee gently before returning her hands to the confines of her lap. Felicity paid little attention to Ray Palmer's reading, appropriate as it was for the occasion, instead letting her eyes wander up to the plaster relief behind his head. It was a depiction of Orpheus holding his beloved Eurydice's hand, both attempting to flee the clutches of Hades.

She felt Donna shift her position slightly and Felicity found herself watching the way her mother's neck curved into her shoulder, a spot that she had often leaned her head on in her childhood when weary while they waited at the stairwell for her father to return home.

This was her mother. She deserved to know the truth, even if she had no solutions to their current conundrum herself.

Ray had finished his reading, and the other guests restarted their conversations about the murder and their plans, Felicity's ears pricked in anticipation of any mention of leaving the house. There was a general sense of uncertainty as to how to behave. Partaking in revelry seemed gauche, but clinging to the somber and maudlin in conversation and demeanour was downright unnatural.

She tilted her head briefly in the direction of the doors, just in time to see the Duke of Starling enter and join the party. As always, his presence had the effect of curtailing her tendency to run through monologues in her mind, and drawing all of her focus towards him, away from the tribulations of her sojourn in this house.

He had changed, and he appeared to be looking for someone amongst them, barely giving any acknowledgement of his presence a similar courtesy in return. "I am looking for our host," she heard him say in interruption of the Countess' questions about where he intended to go.

Felicity stood, an abrupt movement that drew everyone's attention.

"I know where Mr Wilson is," she said. "I could show you, your grace. It's just down the hallway."

A pause followed, as if he needed time to consider her words. "I would be most grateful," he finally said. Felicity took that as her cue and headed right for the door on the other side of the parlour, throwing it open before she waited for him to follow.

The weight of his regard was almost palpable. He was watching her every movement, his face guarded and his own comportment growing more cautious as he came closer to her.

She left the door open and they both stepped into the unlit corridor. Felicity took care to ensure that she could be seen by all the inhabitants of the parlour, but the duke walked to a position before her that would obscure his form from them, illuminated only by the chiaroscuro of candle-light from the parlour dappling the angled planes of his face.

Felicity had never read any of those torrid novels reputed to give women a most horrid imagination but it behooved her to describe him at that moment as nothing other than with the tired cliché that he exuded danger.

"Where is he, Felicity?" he urged, his voice at a register lower and more menacing than it had been during their badinage earlier that afternoon.

This was barely an idea, much less a plan, just the mere inkling of a hope. It was uncharacteristic - she hated blindly gambling on possibilities and much preferred to decide on probabilities, but the few snatches of time she had shared with the Duke of Starling told her that he would not betray her to Slade Wilson, and his current disposition strongly suggested that he himself had a private vendetta against their host. That was all she could ask for to act upon.

"Meet me at the library in two hours' time," she uttered as quietly as she could, clasping her hands together as she did so. Two hours would have to be enough for her to impress upon her mother the exigencies of their circumstances. "I believe Slade Wilson is still talking to his butler in the dining room."

The duke perused her face for a long instant, his own expression inscrutable. Then he turned and entered the shroud-like fold of the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are comparatively fewer easter eggs in this chapter, and the references are mostly historical or fictional rather than comic-book related. The reading on 1st Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley was the most interesting part of my research. I am aware that Diggle references a colonel in Chapter 3 rather than a general - that will be explained later. I hope you will feel that I got Diggle's "You know, Oliver..." trademark speech right in tone.
> 
> The real Sir George had no issue so Lyla is the daughter he never had and I am very happy I don't have to worry about why she doesn't mention her siblings. Although Slade's house is based on Haddon Hall, I was unable to find the real picture there on the internet so I used Edward Poynter's version of Orpheus and Eurydice as my pictorial prompt, even though it didn't exist in 1812.
> 
> The oblique Doctor Who reference is intentional, a hark to the fact that Felicity is a Doctor Who fan on the show. Felicity's escape plan takes a couple of chapters to develop, because she (and I) was under pressure to ensure that Donna's agency is not being taken away from her, that Slade's suspicions will not be aroused to the point of impracticality, and that it is in line with the canonical position that Felicity cannot kick butt in person until she meets Diggle. Though she will gladly kick butt behind a computer, or in this case, with a piece of paper and a pen.


	11. Trust

The dining room was more accurately described as a dining hall. Stretching across its center was a long table capable of seating thirty, illuminated only by two chandeliers that hovered precipitously over all chairs, and the candlesticks arranged on the table itself.

Oliver approached the chair by the head of the table, the place that was meant for him as highest-ranking member of the party. Slade sat at the head, waiting, hand outstretched towards the vacant place.

"Do join me, Oliver."

"For dinner? I'm afraid I'm not dressed for the occasion, my friend." He indicated his attire.

"Nonsense, kid, do you think I care what you wear? Sit with me."

Oliver slid into the seat indicated. The table had been set beforehand, as was typical when a party dined  _en famille_ , and water jugs, wine decanters, quince-filled fruit stands enough to feed two populated their end of the dining table. Just behind him, the side-boards and serving table held plates for fowl, salad, reserve bread and butter, and the requisite paraphernalia for carving. As was the case on the dining table, the portions on the side-board numbered two.

 _Slade had been preparing for this for a while_.

"Will no other guests be joining us?" Oliver asked his host loudly, inasmuch as he knew the answer.

"I've asked Wintergreen – my butler, if you have yet to meet him – to send my other guests supper to the location of their preference in my house. On the eve of a tragedy it would make more sense for a more intimate affair, wouldn't you say?" Slade broke off a piece of his bread and dipped it into the soup bowl before him. "A last supper should have some gravity to it."

Raising his wine glass to his mouth, Oliver allowed the fragrant liquid to only moisten his lips before setting the receptacle back where it was. He did not touch his bread.

"A last supper? The prime minister was shot before dinner began, Slade. Surely we are rather late for one."

Slade gave him an enigmatic smile as he finished the last of his bread and soup. "Touché. I find I am all out of bread, and Wintergreen has yet to return. This is most remiss of him."

"Do have some of mine," Oliver put in hastily. "I confess I'm not that hungry, and it would save you the trouble of getting up."

Slade chortled in response. "I apologise for the irregularity, Oliver. Please pass the bread."

Breaking off a generous piece, Oliver dipped it into the bowl of soup intended for him before offering it to his host. Slade placed the morsel in his mouth, his eyes not leaving Oliver's face as he slowly chewed. Both of them did not speak, the silence only broken when Slade said, "Thank you. I was most anxious waiting for your arrival this evening, Oliver."

"Were you? Never say you had a bone to pick with me."

A man Oliver guessed to be Wintergreen entered to serve the first course as Slade replied, "We never got to finish our little chat this morning. Or our match, come to think of it." He took a hearty drink of wine from his own glass. The butler placed a plate before them, and Oliver saw that it was a calf's head.

"I hope you appreciate the delicious irony of my killing the fatted calf upon your return…" Slade pointed out, before he grew serious and followed his previous train of thought. "In the interests of dinner we might have to postpone the match, but it would please me if you were to indulge my curiosity now and divulge the content of the questions you desired me to answer."

_Did you kill my father?_

Oliver tensed, forcing a pleasant smile to appear outwardly. In his first cursory survey of his surroundings upon entering this chamber, it had not escaped him that in place of the customary display of paintings depicting past ancestors or benefactors, Slade's dining hall was decorated with his extensive collection of steel and iron artifacts. Mostly of the sharp, bladed variety.

"Do you remember the circumstances of our first meeting?" he said.

"Of course. You were the most helpless little lordling I had ever met. I had seen grandmothers run for their lives faster than you did then."

Oliver showed him a mock-grimace, before uttering, "That did not stop you from calling me 'brother' by the end of our time there."

"My training worked somewhat," Slade explained, setting down his cutlery, and folding his hands together. "It seemed logical to consider you one by the time what happened in Crimea ended."

"I agree," said Oliver, leaning forward to better scrutinise his host. "So then, as brother to brother, I hope I can count on you in this instance to answer with honesty." He had placed both hands in Slade's view at all times, within easy reach of the knives. "What were you doing on the evening June the 15th, 1807?"

The butler, Wintergreen, had left while this exchange had occurred and returned with a covered platter he now set down before them before exiting the room. Slade's index finger had begun fidgeting in a filliping motion, and his right shoulder twitched for an instant as he let out a single chuckle. "How very specific, Oliver. You do me too much honour in your assumption that I can recall such details. Do let me think…you might want to reveal what dessert is while I wrestle with my memory…"

Oliver drew his mouth into a flat line and obligingly reached forward to remove the cover. There was no pudding or pie, custard or cream lying in wait to be eaten, but instead the file marked 'Starling' lay open, the incriminating dates open for all to see. He withdrew his arm quickly, just in time to miss the projectile – one of the carving knives, he realised – that Slade had aimed at his outstretched hand.

"Tell me, brother," spat Slade. "What were you doing rifling through my files in my private study?"

Oliver sprang to his feet, reaching behind him for one of the weapons arranged on the wall. In his experience Slade never failed to combine anger with violence, and he now drew a sword that had hitherto been hidden under the dining table as he rose.

"Trying to find the answer to my question, Slade," Oliver said, darting a glance at what he had blindly torn off the wall to defend himself as he backed away to create distance. He held a longbow made of yew in his hand, six feet in length and stringed with a line of hemp.

"How very typical of you, after Crimea. At this close range a crossbow would have been better," remarked Slade, as he brought the full force of his sword down towards Oliver's shoulder.

Oliver side-stepped the blow and rammed the longbow directly towards Slade's solar plexus. "I find I like the reach on this," he replied, darting away and twisting to reach the quiver of arrows on the wall while Slade recovered from the jab to his abdomen. Slade was faster than he had expected, and he landed a blow to his knee with the blunt edge of the sword before Oliver could smack his bow into Slade's side and stagger away.

Swinging the quiver onto his shoulder, he nocked one of the arrows and sent it towards the other man, but Slade deflected it with his sword and smacked Oliver's bow aside with the flat side of the blade. As he dragged Oliver towards him by grabbing a fistful of his shirt and waistcoat, Slade tried to turn the sharp end into his throat, only deterred by the hand Oliver had curled around his elbow to push the sword arm towards Slade's own body. Oliver's own attempt to strike Slade's body with the heavy weight of the longbow was stopped by Slade's other arm, which he wrapped around Oliver's torso in an attempt to bring him closer to the sharp end of his sword.

There they struggled for the upper hand in strength, their bodies shaking with the force being channeled through as they inevitably came closer to each other. Slade's blade now made contact with the dark green wool of his coat, and the stray thought that Diggle would be less than pleased with the ruination of his work struck Oliver as he felt the cold metal through his shirt.

Oliver dropped his bow then, reaching for an arrow, which he plunged into Slade's shoulder, a place he calculated would cause pain but little permanent damage.

They sprang apart from each other, panting heavily, and Oliver dropped to the ground and rolled away from Slade's downward thrust, retrieving his bow as he did so. His recovery position was an upright squat of sorts, which allowed him to shoot quickly and immediately with the few arrows that had remained in his quiver.

He managed to let out three in Slade's direction just as he felt Slade's blade make contact with his side, drawing blood. Slade's sword arm was pinned to the wall by his shoulder, the other two arrows having pierced his hand and arm to only create flesh wounds.

"A draw," breathed Slade.

"I still have two arrows," Oliver reminded him, much as he felt his injured knee buckling from the strain of holding his weight.

Slade raised his free arm to reveal a slim dagger that had been in his other hand. "I could send this towards you as fast as you can shoot them both, though it would be a shame if one of us dies before you get your answer."

"Let me ask the question again, and more clearly, then. Did you kill my father?"

"No," Slade replied.

"You're lying."

"I was not in England during then, Oliver. You bloody know as well as I do that I spent those years hiring my services out, because Europe was at war. My secretary must have made a mistake with the filing. Besides, do you think I would be as stupid as to equip the son of the man I killed with fighting skills instead of skewering him myself years later, just so he could come to my home in Cambridgeshire and skewer me now?"

Oliver staggered to the dining table, propping himself up with his empty hand. "Did you know that that was the night my father's carriage was attacked?"

Slade was confident as he enunciated his denial. The servants' door opened to reveal Wintergreen, who had evidently been drawn by the commotion. "It's just a minor disagreement, Wintergreen," Slade said. "Come and help me get off this wall."

Oliver kept his focus on Slade's countenance throughout the conversation, trying to discern if Slade spoke the truth. He had no way to tell, no evidence to corroborate anything said. "Did you send your men to attack me in Hyde Park?"

"No," replied Slade.

"Then explain those fortuitous dates."

"As I said, kid, the first is probably a mistake. I took thousands of assignments then and there must be a filing error. As for the second…" he yelped when Wintergreen pulled his torso forward with the arrow that had been lodged to the wall. Oliver had not been able to use his full strength when drawing the bow, which made it relatively easy, albeit painful, for a full-grown man to yank it out of the wooden paneling, provided he used both hands.

Slade's breaths were laboured as Wintergreen helped him to a seat, trying to recover himself. "Bloody arrows and their bloody painful ways of removal…" he muttered. "As I was saying, May the sixteenth is coming soon."

"Yes, and so?" Oliver said impatiently, setting the longbow down on the table.

"That's your blasted birthday, you ass," Slade growled, "I was going to surprise you."

Oliver blinked. "Oh," was all he said.

"'Oh'?" repeated Slade in indignation but Wintergreen had returned with a foul-smelling poultice and bandages and he let out a string of curses instead. Oliver started towards the door, intending to make his meeting with Felicity, for which he was already late.

"Aren't you going to bloody apologise for invading my privacy?" Slade demanded.

"I don't have time for a duel of honour, Slade," Oliver said, pausing at the door, "but you may have any favour I am able to give as my apology."

He shut the door before he could hear Slade's reply, limping towards the location of the library. The vast majority of his acquaintances could be divided into two categories: before the carriage accident and after. All whom he knew before the accident were possible suspects, and those whom he had met after were not. Finding Slade's file had upset that understanding, and Oliver was not sure he could be satisfied with the explanation that he had put forth.

Touching a hand to his side, he scowled at the resulting pain and warm moistness that was seeping through his coat. He was losing blood and with it, his strength, though by some miracle there was not a trail following him about the house. Perhaps his coat was absorbing most of it.

The library door opened just as he reached it, and he looked down into Felicity Smoak's startled expression.

"Your grace!" she exclaimed. "I mean, Oliver. I mean – good heavens, you're bleeding!" She threw up her hands to support him now, as if she could support his full weight with her diminutive frame, her eyes searching his form carefully for injuries.

"I don't need to be told that," he gave her a little shake of his head, bracing a hand on the side of the wall so that he did not bowl them both over in the event he collapsed.

She was flustered, he realised, and anxious on his account, because not for more than a second did she cease talking.

"Oh my goodness… You, you need a doctor…" She had swung his arm around her shoulders and begun nudging him in the direction of the parlour. "We're going to get you a doctor…You don't need to say anything right now, we're going to find Dr Palmer and everything will be fine…"

"Felicity," he intoned.

"…everything will be fine," she kept repeating, not hearing him.

"Felicity," he said again, this time securing her attention with his firmer tone. She turned her head towards his face, raising her chin to better see him. "Bring me to my room and call for my valet."

"Oliver," she said slowly, as if his injuries had reached his head. "You need a doctor. Not your valet."

He closed his eyes, not wanting to prolong the time taken for him to get his wounds tended to by bickering with her. "You need to promise me that you bring me to my valet, and let him handle the situation."

There was a slight pause before she relented. "I promise."

He allowed her to direct his movements as they half dragged his body forward, keeping his eyes closed and relying entirely on her to lead him to his room. They stopped, and he observed that her hands were shaking as she wrenched at the knob.

Diggle appeared to be reading something by the window, the valises for their return to London arranged neatly by his feet.

"Excuse me?" Felicity called, and Oliver felt a stirring of amusement at her ability to sound so polite in light of the circumstances. His mother would have been proud, once she got over raising a furor at the injuries he had sustained.

Diggle's reaction to her voice was to reach for his pistol as he raised his eyes to the doorframe where they both stood. Comprehending the situation, he rushed forward to help Oliver to the bed, whereupon he picked up a valise and began methodically rummaging through its contents.

"Let me help," said Felicity. "Shall I ring for water?"

Oliver was straining to maintain consciousness, but he dimly made out the shake of Diggle's head as he answered, "No, miss, the blood on your dress will call unwanted attention. There is a basin in the corner that you could bring to the bedside."

"Diggle, I've sustained a blunt blow to my knee and two cuts to my torso," Oliver called out weakly. "Felicity, in view of circumstances, I must postpone our meeting and will find you later."

But she had already picked up the basin and was placing it neatly on the dresser. Diggle came into his view bearing bandages and said, "I could use a hand, your grace."

Oliver had started unbuttoning his coat, and the tang of his blood grew stronger in the air as it fell open. "John, she's a lady."

"Who isn't afraid of blood or too missish to help save your life," Felicity interjected. She turned to Diggle. "What would you like me to do?"

Diggle had lifted Oliver and was tugging the coat and shirt off his back. "Help me bring this to that chair by the window, Miss Smoak – I presume?"

"Felicity Smoak, at your service," she confirmed, gathering the clothes and leaving to do as told. "Also technically not a lady, kind as his grace is to say so."

Diggle examined his wounds with a critical eye, pressing gently on the flesh around the open wounds and frowning. "You're very lucky I brought supplies, your grace." He left and Oliver heard the sound of glasses clinking where he went, as Felicity returned to his side.

He watched her eyes widen, her mouth opening ever so slightly as her gaze travelled downwards. Oliver supposed he looked a fright, with scars crisscrossing where fresh bloodstains did not mark his body.

"Miss Smoak, could you mop up the blood and apply pressure to the larger wound by his grace's side once you're done?"

She jumped, as one would when broken out of a reverie, and muttered a "certainly" before picking up a bandage and dipping it into the basin to dampen it. As she leaned closer, Oliver realised that her cheeks had turned red, not white, from the sight of his naked chest.

He somehow found it in him to smile. "That bad, huh?" he said innocently, though the glint in his eyes was anything but so. Felicity narrowed her eyes at him briefly before she prodded his open wound with the bandage.

Oliver let out a hiss at the shock of the pain, his body buckling slightly.

"Absolutely terrible," she said smugly. "Awful, even."

He bit back a grin. This was the second time she inspired in him the desire to laugh despite his dire position. There was just something about her – her perspective was so different from his own view that just being in her presence drew his focus away from all current unpleasant realities.

Diggle returned with a needle and thread in a hand, and a small vial in another. "Make sure he takes this," he said, handing the vial to Felicity. "His grace needs stitching."

"Hartshorn?" she wondered out loud, popping it open. A distinctively sweet aroma entered his nose the moment she opened it, and Oliver recognised the fumes of opium.

"No," he said, as firmly as he could in his weakened state.

She brought the vial near to his face. "You said to let your valet handle the situation."

"I am not taking that." Oliver turned his head to the side to emphasise his rejection of the drug. And then, louder, "I don't need laudanum, Digg."

Felicity's hand came back into his view; she must have reached further across him to bring the vial back under his nose. "I don't understand why you're being so stubborn about this."

"His grace is stubborn about everything," came Diggle's reply from wherever he was in the room.

Oliver resisted the urge to scowl and turned back to face Felicity. "I'm very particular about what it is I put into my body," he said evasively.

"I've noticed," she replied, and then shook herself in mortification. "I said 'not noticed', right?"

Diggle spared them both the ignominy of having to continue that line of conversation by reappearing by Oliver's injured side. "Your grace, I can't strap you down because of the way your injuries are on your body. You're going to have to hold still despite the pain."

"I understand," Oliver replied, gritting his teeth. "Proceed."

The first prick of the needle was bearable but the gash Slade had inflicted was fairly long and it was always the waiting that was the worst of it. Oliver glanced down at the faded scar on his abdomen, where the skin had healed most unevenly from his own inaptitude at needlepoint and his impatience to finish quickly the process of the extracting a bullet and closing the torn flesh. He sensed Diggle would be more neat than he was.

Felicity was watching the sewing with an expression close to horror, wincing involuntarily and growing paler each time he felt the instrument enter his flesh. "A lady who's afraid of needles but not of blood?" he asked, and she lowered her right hand from where it was clenched near her chin.

Shooting him a warning look, she turned and addressed Diggle instead. "May I know if I could do anything else?"

"There's a red glass jar in the valise I've just opened, Miss Smoak. It should contain honey, which you should apply with a brush to the other wound on his chest – it's shallow and we just need to prevent infection," replied Diggle, without looking away from his task.

Oliver listened to the rustle of her skirts as she stepped away to the valises, a sound that was followed by her muttering "Red… Red…" She returned and he felt himself relaxing with the first gentle touch of her honey-tipped brush on his chest.

"So how did you come about these injuries, your grace?" asked Felicity, her concentration focused on applying the salve to his wound.

"Oliver," he corrected.

"Oliver," she conceded, adjusting her spectacles with her knuckles of the hand that held the brush. "Answer the question."

"An incident with a savage animal," he lied, to which Diggle let out a snort of laughter, before resuming his task, his face once again blankly impassive.

Felicity's ability to keep her thoughts off her face was not as developed as Diggle's. "A savage animal…at this time of the night? Oliver, I may think that swans are the embodiment of evil, but any wild creature you can encounter now must surely be human. And female. And spurned by you."

At this Diggle abandoned all attempts to remain professional and he paused his sewing to openly snigger. Controlling his urge to glower at his valet, Oliver shot Felicity one of his best smiles, tilting his head as he did so, and turned the conversation back onto her, away from himself.

"Tell me, Felicity, why did you so urgently need to speak to me this evening?"

Upon hearing his words it was as if all the wind was taken out of her sails, and he watched her tense and her mouth crumple from its jovial simper to a strained pursing that matched the newfound gravity in her tone. "I've made my mind up about my payment for your request."

Oliver waited for her to finish. Setting down the jar of honey, she pulled an envelope out of her pocket and offered it to him. "I need you to secretly and swiftly convey my mother from here to Bristol. Find a hothouse known as The Canary's Posies and deliver both my mother and this to its proprietor. I will need you to send a hack to Bridge Street, just outside Magdalene College in Cambridge a week from now so I can meet you in London to discuss the coded message your father - "

She stopped, because he was gripping her wrist, a frown on his face. "How do you know the proprietor of The Canary's Posies?" he inquired, his voice measured and low.

The corner of her mouth twitched slightly. "I'm F. M. Smoak. Formerly Felix Sherwood, no thanks to Slade Wilson," she said, as if it was an adequate explanation that made sense.

Oliver opened his mouth to argue but she cut him off with, "You've been dropping some fairly ridiculous lies on me, and yet I am choosing to trust you. Unless you want to tell me the full story about the bloodstains - yes, bloodstains - on your papers, I'd prefer we acknowledge that both of us are not idiots, and proceed as I have proposed, no questions asked."

Diggle cleared his throat then, and Oliver saw that he had finished sewing up his wound and was standing solemnly by the bed.

"Deal," he sighed, taking the envelope from her.

She let out a sound that spoke of relief and elation, clasping both her hands together before her to her chest. "Excellent. Please leave by dawn tomorrow morning so I don't have to explain any more details to my mother." Looking about her as if to ascertain that her work was finished here, she made her way to his door and then rapidly turned back to face them.

"May I borrow a sheet or a coat of some sorts so I'm not seen leaving a gentleman's room at this time of the night?" she asked tentatively. "I mean, I  _am_  leaving a gentleman's room, at this time of the night, but you know what I mean… I'll definitely return it the next time I see you..."

Diggle's dark eyes sparkled with humour and goodwill as he handed her one of Oliver's coats and she left with it draped over her head. Oliver climbed out of the bed, testing his knee gingerly as he contemplated the logistics of sneaking an additional person out of Cambridgeshire.

"I like her," Diggle remarked, placing a stabilising hand on Oliver's upper arm.

Oliver did not respond to that sentiment. "Get the things ready," he said. "We leave an hour before dawn."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the penultimate chapter for what I like to call the Cambridge or 'Everything takes place in a house like a bad horror movie' arc.
> 
> The working title was 'Feast' at first, because I wanted to draw heavily on the literary tradition of using banquets as the scene of deception. The tie-in with the second half was when Felicity’s eyes widened while Oliver was being healed. I think Trust is better, because it raises the question of extent.
> 
> As mentioned before Slade’s Cambridgeshire property is based loosely on Haddon Hall in Derbyshire.  
> In line with the original theme of Feast, I spent all of one evening reading up on the symbolic value of food in still life paintings from 17th century Flanders, Shakespeare and the Bible. I didn’t get to use much of it because rotting food was not acceptable at the table though mortality and death was not what I quite wanted, and it turns out when people paint food sometimes they just wanted to paint food. The choice of quinces for the fruit platter was intentional, because of they have been depicted in some paintings as the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
> 
> SO MUCH READING ON DINING ETIQUETTE IN THE REGENCY and Oliver doesn’t even take a bite. Rude.
> 
> Wintergreen: when I first cast this chapter I thought that Slade had to have serving staff, so who better on the show to serve him than his ex-partner Wintergreen? Imagine my delight and surprise when I read up on Deathstroke’s comic book origins and found that Wintergreen was indeed originally envisioned as his butler.
> 
> Passing the bread and dipping it: not a subtle reference to the account of the last supper as seen in the Gospel of John 13:18-27.
> 
> Fatted calf: also unsubtle allusion to the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32.
> 
> Green coat: the choice of colour whenever I dress my male lead characters in historical fiction, not limited to Oliver Queen being the Green Arrow, but because of James McAvoy’s green coat in Becoming Jane
> 
> Oliver grabs a longbow: archery was popular among the aristocrat class (see film adaptation of Emma) and actually has a strong tradition in English military history, and it was said in an earlier chapter that his ancestor came with William the Conqueror as a longbow archer. The specific inspiration for using a longbow also came from The Longbow Hunters in the Green Arrow comics
> 
> Stitching up the wound: inspired by Episode 10 of Outlander specifically
> 
> Hartshorn was used sometimes as opposed to vinegar to wake people up
> 
> I can’t bring in a red pen so everything possible is red when it comes to Felicity in my story - red shoes and now red bottle
> 
> I trust I don’t need to explain all the line by line lifting from the show (I rewatch Olicity Queen’s channel when I write this) but the swans are the embodiment of evil speech was a veiled reference to her kangaroos are evil conversation with Walter, and indeed my own opinion about those creatures
> 
> The Canary’s Posies: in the comics, the Black Canary’s civilian cover is the owner of a flower shop known as Sherwood Florist, which itself is a reference to Sherwood Forest where Robin Hood frequented. That’s the origin of Felicity’s alter ego name in this story. Sara, as the Canary, still owns a flower shop in Bristol in my story. This is slightly inspired by Madeline Hunter’s The Rarest Blooms.
> 
> Felicity asks to Oliver to send a hack to Bridge Street in Cambridge, but today we would recognise that particular location as Magdalene Bridge, which was constructed only in 1823. It was necessary to tell you exactly where it was because otherwise Oliver could have sent the hack to the Round Church, which is some paces down the road.


	12. Business

They were not alone when he found his way to the female side of the guest wing a few hours later. Oliver barely kept from raising a brow as a tall, male figure emerged from the room occupied by Felicity and Donna Smoak.

"Your grace!" exclaimed Dr Raymond Palmer, one hand pointed at Oliver and the other flailing in the direction of the other doors down the corridor. "But this is where the female guests are staying…"

Oliver remained taciturn, his face serious, to let the man draw his own conclusions about his presence. His own thoughts on what the physician was doing in Felicity Smoak's room were running rampant, and he ignored the rankle of the inkling that she had enlisted another man's help for her mysterious purposes. There was some degree of gratification felt as Palmer's mouth dropped open in accordance with the wanderings of his mind, and then the doctor nodded emphatically, cheeks a furious shade of red.

 _The countess?_  Dr Palmer mouthed, indicating at a room three doors down from where he stood.

Once again Oliver made no response other than a polite smile.

"You're right," Dr Palmer whispered, at a volume that was usually only heard on stage. "A gentleman should never say… I myself am here on strictly professional business, of course – my profession, not my patient's. I'm a physician, as your grace knows…"

Oliver clasped his hands behind his back, waiting for the man to show himself out of the corridor. Diggle had already loaded the carriage he had come to Cambridgeshire in and was waiting patiently for Oliver to return with Donna. With the last echoes of the doctor's footsteps fading behind him, he knocked gently to alert the Smoaks to his presence.

The door opened by a mere crack and he felt the weight of someone studying him skeptically before it opened fully so he could enter.

"Sorry about the doctor," Felicity said, closing the door. "I thought to summon him so that my cover story would be a little more believable." She had changed into a nightdress since he last saw her, a simple gown of cotton virginal in colour and make. Stray curls of her hair hung loosely from where she had secured it in the back, and Oliver found himself wondering what she would look like with all of it down about her shoulders. The memory of what she had looked like when he first met her came to him unbidden then, and he admitted that he found her just as mesmerising in this simple guise as he did when she was dressed to the nines.

He shook his head –  _Felicity Smoak was his associate!_ – and looked around for Donna. She was fully dressed for the journey, but stretched across a bed, seemingly seized in a deep slumber that rendered her insensible to the world. As he banished all his impure thoughts about her daughter, he took a closer look at the older woman.

 _Hell._ She was indeed unconscious.

"I did not drug my mother, in case you are wondering," came Felicity's voice. "This was her idea – a bit of laudanum, me playing the role of a very anxious daughter, and an unsuspecting physician to corroborate the fact that Donna Smoak was unable to leave this room until midday at least. I trust you should be able to carry an unconscious adult woman to the stables, what with your…"

She had looked pointedly at the arms of his coat, but then covered her cheek with a hand, supporting its elbow with her other hand and made a show of waiting for him to act.

Her desire for secrecy piqued his interest greatly, but he had agreed not to ask her questions about her intentions. "May I have a piece of paper?" he asked. "Dr Palmer thinks that I am here to pay a nocturnal visit to the countess and so I need to leave a note under her door."

"Certainly." Felicity crossed the room and retrieved a set of writing instruments. There was humour in her eyes as she offered a pot of red ink and a quill pen to him.

He extricated the quill from her hands – stained with ink, he now descried – wondering at the speed at which they had achieved this sense of amiable camaraderie and how natural it felt despite their short acquaintance, and then hesitated just before he set to paper his first word.

"What's the matter, Oliver?" she teased. "Need help composing your  _billet-doux_?"

They were now associates, he told himself. If she could trust him with her mother's safety, he could trust her with one secret of his own. He scribbled a farewell message to the countess, handing it to Felicity before the ink was dry on the final address of ' _Starling_ '.

"Could you slip that under her door for me? I'll take your mother with me now, before the servants awaken."

He watched her knit her brows as she read the words on his message, before he slipped an arm under Donna's body and lifted her easily from the bed.

"I'm sending my man Diggle to London with her first, where they will stay at a coaching inn while I say goodbye to our host. As promised, I will escort your mother via the earliest mailcoach service to Bristol and she should be there in two days' time, at the very latest. Have you any questions or is there anything you failed to specify in our agreement?"

Felicity folded away his note, which she now clutched loosely in her right hand, the other reaching forward to cover her mother's sleeping form with the coat she had borrowed from him earlier that night. "Stay safe, mother," she whispered, and Oliver felt a touch of warmth in his chest at the sight of her tender expression.

She lifted her eyes back to his face, tilting her head back due to their difference in height to see him better. "You should probably know that I am not at this party by will. When I escape next week I will have to do so with none of my belongings, though rest assured I will bring your paper with me." She tapped her chest with a hand. "I will secret the document on my person and one will have to rip my bodice off to get at it."

He blinked at the graphic image conjured by those words.

"…that came out very badly. My point is, I will have no belongings of my own when I see you next week. I would be grateful if you could arrange for a gown or two in my size to be ready for me, if convenient."

Nodding, Oliver followed her lead out to the corridor, waiting as she bent down to slip his note under the countess's door. Felicity straightened and folded her arms across her chest.

"If inconvenient, please do it anyway. And a nightgown would be helpful, if you don't mind."

Oliver suppressed the urge to smirk at her attempt to sound business-like following her verbal gaffe. He let his gaze traverse lazily down her form now, lingering at every swell and curve visible through the soft fabric of her nightgown, and letting his body's memory of her supplement what the thick cotton she wore obscured.

She folded her arms hastily across her chest as if to serve as a bulwark against the onslaught of his leer.

"Just trying to ascertain your size," he dipped his head in apology, the overly obsequious tenor to his actions betraying his true intention to tease her.

The tips of her ears were a furious shade of red as she blurted in a stage whisper, "My mother can give you the address of my modiste when she wakes up! Good-bye, Oliver!"

This time Oliver did not deny to himself that he felt mirth swelling within him as he exited the corridor, and discreetly brought Donna to the stables where Diggle was waiting.

* * *

_With the trial of John Bellingham set for Friday, the attention of the bon ton has been caught by another similarly pressing matter: will Miss L____ L___ be present at the Duke of S_'s birthday ball on the Saturday after? The duke's twenty-eighth promises to be the event of the Season, with everyone who's anyone invited, though the jury is still out on whether his erstwhile fiancée will deign to attend. For the uninitiated, Miss L_______ was engaged to the duke before it all ended in disgrace when her little sister and he disappeared on the night of yet another S__________ ball. Though frequently seen in the company of his mother and Lady T____, Miss L______ has yet to publicly display her reaction to her fiancé's return, barring an incident where she danced with Lord T_ M_ instead of accepting him. Will the next S__________ ball be the one where Miss L_______'s fortunes change, or will the details of her sister's disappearance be revealed to all? This author can only hope so._

 

Laurel crumpled the scandal sheet with a fist, dropping it to the ground and kicking it to the side. Her housemaid had the sense not to react, and they entered the viscountess' bedroom with the rest of the day's newspapers folded neatly on the breakfast tray.

"Good morning, mother," she said in a low voice, motioning for the curtains to be drawn such that afternoon light could stream into the room. It was a rare dry day in London, and rays of muted sunlight fell across the shadows of the carpeted floor.

The viscountess stirred, a dreamy smile appearing on her face, though she made no move to rise from where she lay ensconced in sheets and pillows. "I dreamt my baby came back for dinner today…" she murmured, as Laurel rearranged the bedding to prop her into a more upright position. "Did you set a place for her, Laurel dear?"

Putting down the cup of tea she had been making for her mother's breakfast, Laurel sat on the bed by her, careful not to disturb the arrangement of dolls that once belonged to her sister. She placed a hand over Dinah's. "Of course, mother. We always set a place for Sara, though she might be late tonight and would want you and father to eat first. Three places, the staff has been told. Now won't you take some tea?"

Dinah was vexed by the information. Of late she mostly languished in bed, unable to summon up the energy to rise, but now she struggled to sit straighter, her voice quavering but increasingly loud in volume as the blankets which kept her warm became askew. "Three? Three? But Sara is coming back for dinner – Laurel, you said she's coming for dinner…"

Laurel squeezed her mother's hand. "No, mother. Do you remember when I told you yesterday that I'll be visiting Aunt Barbara for a couple of days? And that I won't be around for dinner tonight? Everyone's going to be at dinner, barring me. See? Three places means one place for Sara, one place for you, and one place for father."

With her reassurance, her mother ceased to struggle, visibly relaxing at the mention of her daughter's name. "So Sara will come back today?"

Laurel nodded, adding, "Sara will come back, even if she's very late in doing so. Now, tea?"

Dinah's smile widened. "What time do you think Sara will be back, Laurel? Will she stay long, do you think? I've prepared her dolls for her. Do you think she'll like them?"

Blowing gently on the surface of the hot liquid, Laurel took a small sip to test its taste and heat before lifting it to her mother's mouth, a hand cradled at Dinah's nape in support. "Of course, mother. Sara always loves the stories you make up with her dolls. Would you care for some toast?"

There was the sound of a scratch on the door, and the maid opened it to reveal Tommy standing by the doorframe. He raised his right arm in greeting, a bouquet of hydrangeas in hand.

Laurel rose to tuck the blankets around her mother, stepping back to ensure she was comfortable before she beckoned him in. As always, he entered but remained a respectful distance away, just out of Dinah's immediate line of vision, as he waited for Laurel to announce his arrival.

"Mother," she said. "Look who's here to visit."

Only at that cue did Tommy come to stand beside her, the bouquet held out.

"How are you, Lady Lance?" he asked softly, kneeling by the bed so as to make it easier for her to see him. "I brought hydrangeas from my hothouse today, since you mentioned that you like them. What do you think? Do they compare to the ones the viscount brought you on your last birthday?"

Dinah raised a weak hand to stroke a petal. "How kind of you. Young Thomas Merlyn…always such a good boy. Did Oliver come as well?"

Laurel was grateful that Tommy always seemed to know what to say. "I'm afraid not, my lady," he said. "Oliver is busy today and sends his regrets and apologies."

She closed her eyes, her words growing slurred as she drifted back into slumber. "You must wait for Sara… Tell Oliver to work hard at Oxford…"

They spent a few seconds watching the sheets rise and fall with each even breath the viscountess took. As Tommy handed the bouquet to the maid to be relocated into a vase, Laurel's gaze wandered to the collection of dolls, each bearing a whimsically chosen name that she could no longer remember clearly without her sister to remind her. She placed a hand absentmindedly on the one Sara had loved best, an ugly, ragged thing. Laurel had never been able to understand her sister's affection for it, though for a moment now she reckoned it looked forlorn without its mistress, its ears needing mending, the fabric worn.

It had been left behind, she thought. Left behind, just like Laurel and Dinah and even Quentin, for all his bluster, now in a permanent state of waiting, a limbo that it could not easily escape from.

She closed her fist. She was becoming overcome with maudlin thoughts. Raking a careful glance across the room and her mother one last time before she left, Laurel gestured to the tea tray to indicate that it was to be cleared and ushered Tommy out of the viscountess' bedroom, whereupon she picked up the bonnet and wrapped parcel she had left on the side table.

"She seems well," observed Tommy, checking that they were out of Dinah's earshot with the close of her chamber's doors. "Peaceful, I'd say."

"She's not crying hysterically anymore, true, but she also thinks it's 1802. I can't say which ailment I prefer, though her current confusion does make it easier for me to effect a disappearance from London."

Tommy took the parcel from her, freeing her hands to secure the bonnet. "By the by, I told your staff to load your valise into my carriage when I first arrived. Your maid has already joined my valet with the baggage. What did you tell your father?"

"The same thing I told my mother." Laurel tilted her head back to adjust the bow. "Father thinks I'm staying with Aunt Barbara in Bath for a couple of days, and we will have to make a short trip there on our way back. Otherwise he doesn't suspect a thing."

Tommy made a face. "Your aunt is a very sharp woman. Are you sure she won't raise any suspicions to your father?"

"My aunt thinks father is overbearing and paranoid, on his best days. There'll be no fuss on her account even if she does suspect something." She turned to face him as he took her hand to help her up into his carriage. "You're just saying this because you think she doesn't like you."

Tommy scoffed as he waited for her redingote's skirts to fully follow her into the vehicle. "Can't imagine why she wouldn't. I'm a prime specimen of the male species, of a quality she has little chance to witness in Bath. Also, has the viscount nothing to say about the fact that you're purportedly travelling by stagecoach with only your maid for company?"

"Tommy, it can't be more scandalous if I were alone, or alone with you!" She ran a finger along the line of buttons on her glove, foot tapping in impatience. "You're worse that my father – even he knows that at four and twenty I am a year away from becoming entirely hopeless in prospects. Even without the whiff of scandal associated with the Lance name following…well. If I'm to bear the taint of ruination, I might as well take the advantages of freedom that come with it. Now, shall we leave or are we to sit here all afternoon?"

Ever obliging, Tommy rapped the front panel of his carriage to signal that they could depart. The vehicle lurched into action and he studied her face for a spell, just to utter, "It's quite a long journey. You might want to relax over here." He motioned at his own face with a hand.

Laurel touched her jawline. "Pardon?"

"Relax. You're always tense there when Oliver is mentioned, and you've been gritting your teeth ever since your mother said his name back at Lance House."

This time she felt the twitching of her muscles under her fingertips, an involuntarily tic she had hitherto never noticed before. She curled her hand into a fist. "How can I not be vexed?" She knew she sounded defensive, a side effect of the embarrassment flooding through her – though she knew not why she felt it at all, and she raised her voice to mask that confusion pooling in her. "You saw how my mother is. You saw what she has become. Ever since he's come back, Ollie's never once said sorry, or come to see her, and all the  _ton_ can talk about these days is whether poor Laurel Lance will finally find a gentleman to take her off her parents' hands! My mother is wasting away in bed, my father has become obsessed with law enforcement in London to the extent of not coming home - "

She broke off, her bosom heaving as she struggled to compose herself.  _And through being unable to retain Ollie's interest, I have become the laughingstock of all London, which nothing I do will ever remove as a taint upon my reputation._

"Laurel," Tommy's voice cut into her thoughts, his gaze and tone gentle but firm. "Remember how you railed to me about your father when he refused to let you attend the Merlyns' house party?"

She frowned. "Yes, that was two years ago. How is this relevant to the present topic at hand?"

"You said that the viscount has the tendency to assume everyone has the same amount of knowledge as he does when upset, and that he draws wild conclusions based on that assumption, conclusions that only aggravate his temper further."

The unspoken implication was in the meaningful look he shot her, that Laurel could be described by her own words now.

Scowling, she said, "Are you telling me that he should be absolved for somehow failing to know what may as well be common knowledge across London? That I don't have the right to be angry?"

There was a pause as he considered his words carefully. "I don't talk about you to Oliver, Laurel, and there is a high chance that the rest of the  _ton_ will not raise the issue as well. I'm saying that Oliver can be obtuse due to his unobservant nature. But he usually tries to overcompensate when made aware of the fallout of his actions. Rather than becoming irate at this point, it may be prudent to ascertain what he knows." He let out a chuckle. "If Ollie doesn't respond appropriately, you may borrow my cane to smack him with."

The carriage hit an uneven stretch in the road then, and Laurel threw out a hand against the door to steady herself. She cast her eyes heavenward, just as their route evened out. "I hate it when you use my own words against me," she grumbled.

"It's a necessary evil you must live with," he grinned. "Just imagine, without my clear-headed assistance you would be on trial for the murder of Oliver by now."

She laughed. "And you think I wouldn't be able to arrange it such that no suspicion falls upon me? You think too little of me, sir."

He sobered up immediately, and his countenance was grave as he said, " _Au contraire_ , Miss Lance, I hold you in very high regard indeed."

They sat still, holding each other's gaze, and Laurel felt within her a sort of stirring she had not experienced for a long time.  _This is Tommy_ , she reminded herself, even as she noticed for the first time that when his trademark boyish grin was off his face, his blue eyes became all the more intense and one would realise that they saw much but revealed little of his inner thoughts. She had no business observing the way the little cleft in his chin drew attention to his lips.

Swallowing, she tried for casual levity to dispel the feelings within her. "So, all-knowing assistant to my enlightenment and prime specimen of the male species, any other ostensible truths that I have heretofore been completely oblivious to?

Instead of using her prompt as an opening for another joke, he gave her a small smile she would have described as sad. "No," he shook his head, his tongue darting out briefly to moisten his lips. "Not at all."

The way he had tensed when she broached the topic suggested otherwise, but Tommy closed his eyes then, a signal that the conversation was over. She picked at her skirts, feeling irritated from her impression that there was something he was not telling her.

"Tommy," she called out, out of sense of perversity.

He grunted in reply, or was it because the carriage had hit a larger bump and the jostle the wheels had interrupted his rest then?

Laurel turned to the window in the carriage door, forcing herself to focus on tracing outlines in the cover of clouds obscuring the sun's gold luster in the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goal when writing this: make everyone close to tears with the mother-daughter scenes. Did I succeed? :)
> 
> This chapter is not very reference heavy, beyond the Sherlock joke and the meta-jokes about the historical romance genre (bodice ripping and heaving bosoms, for the uninitiated). It should be noted that travel by mailcoach is the fastest and most expensive service that one could possibly use for the 106 miles from London to Bristol and stagecoach the second fastest (though Tommy's using his own horses and vehicles so it might be faster than the average of 6 miles per hour to get there via stagecoach, closer to 8).
> 
> On a side note the more I write Tommy the more I love him. I think it's time to put more effort into emphasising that Oliver is the brooding byronic hero we so enjoy, much as it has been fun to write him with a slightly thawed heart when in the presence of a certain F. M. Smoak.


	13. Safe

When morning came, the remaining members of the party were unfazed by the reduction in their numbers when it came down to sustaining the general air of indulgence cultivated by their previous days together. It was decided fairly early on after breakfast that lawn tennis and archery were out of the question, owing to the departure of Corinthians such as the Duke of Starling, for men and women alike agreed that this meant a diminution in the viewing enjoyment to be derived. Following a hullabaloo about the type of parlour games that adequately trod the delicate line of risqué as opposed to being downright vulgar, it was finally agreed that the ladies in the party would make a jaunt to Market Square in central Cambridge, while their male counterparts engaged themselves in that hallowed pursuit of male gentry that hunting was.

Felicity beamed brightly at the on dit being shared by a member of her company, and tucked a cold hand into the crook of Dr Palmer's elbow to keep it from shaking. Donna's absence had yet to be commented on, but she judged that it was merely a matter of time before Slade realised that his one point of leverage over her had disappeared from his property. Oliver was far from the only guest that had departed after the news of the Prime Minister's assassination broke out, which provided her some degree of comfort with regard to the anonymity of Donna's escape.

They were waiting in the entrance hall for the carriages to be brought round to the front of the house, listening to Dr Palmer relating a story from his student days. Dr Palmer had excused himself from the hunt on the pretext that his Asclepiad oath precluded his ability to watch the deliberate infliction of wounds on any creature, and any insinuation that this view made him less of a man was rendered silent immediately when one surveyed his tall frame and broad shoulders.

The last of the carriages arrived, and as she passed through the door, Slade's butler stopped her with a "I'm dreadfully sorry, but my master has asked that Miss Smoak wait for him. He will convey her to the rest of the company in his curricle." There was some confusion but the party was quite determined to leave first.

Felicity clutched her reticule tighter, keeping her smile on her face, even as she disengaged her hand from Dr Palmer's arm and returned it to her side. It was a matter of minutes before Slade Wilson emerged at the top of the stairwell.

"Felicity," came his familiar rasp. "Whatever has happened to your delightful mother?"

She prayed her façade and voice were the definition of calm as she replied, "My mother is indisposed, Slade. Dr Palmer came in this morning to look for her and prescribed bed rest, inasmuch as she was unlikely to awake till late in the afternoon." This information would be corroborated by any servants that were watching her come and go, provided they did not actually enter her room.

Slade smirked. "Wintergreen," he said. "Pray go check on the poor woman and ensure that she is comfortable."

The butler left and Felicity forced herself to meet Slade's gaze as she waited for her deception to be found out. They stood in their places, and he remained cordial as he continued the conversation.

"Are you fond of dolls, my dear Felicity?"

Her brief childhood in her father's house, and then in the townhouse where her mother's colleagues resided when in between patrons did not include toys of any sorts. She shook her head now.

"This humble house of mine has a name from before I bought it, but I saw fit to rechristen it in light of its recent purposes."

"Needle-Eye?" she proffered, to his great amusement.

"Not quite, though to be honest that suggestion far outstrips the one I settled on. I'm almost tempted to rename it in your honour. This property of mine is known as the Doll's House, because I've loaned it to a friend of mine for most of the year."

As the patter of Wintergreen's returning footsteps grew louder, she felt her throat constrict and she tried to concentrate on regulating the evenness of her breathing.

"I see," she said. "Does your friend have children, then?"

He chortled. "Dear, dear Felicity. So very innocent…"

She said nothing, her nervousness far outstripping the ire that she would normally experience upon being patronised.

Wintergreen came into view, and Slade's expression did not change when his butler reported his findings. He descended the stairs with a feline-like grace, and offered his arm to her.

"I thought to show you something before we head to Market Square. Will you come with me?"

She touched him gingerly, and they started towards the basement in a pace commonly reserved for hearses, despite his imposing stature and the capacity for speed she had witnessed firsthand in one of his famous morning swordplay rituals.

Felicity kept her eyes trained on what was before her. Each step she took was echoed by a hard thud in her chest, and she barely heard the strains of the melody he was whistling before he remarked, "I'm sure you're familiar with this tune, Felicity."

It was all she could do not to stop in her tracks as he repeated the whistle. She let out a laugh that sounded nervous to her ears.

"…'Birds of Prey' is a nursery rhyme only sung by children, Slade."

"And women across Britain. I wonder why that is. The words are most curious – mentions of a canary aside, all other allusions are to the weather and Apollonian mythology."

"Ditties and fairy tales alike often have interesting origins," she stated. "Most are cautionary accounts, meant to underscore a particular value."

His smile grew wider. "I defer to your expertise as always, Felicity. I've always been partial to the tale of Bluebeard myself, what about you?"

"' _The Arabian Nights' Entertainment_ ' was a childhood favourite," she replied. It was the one book of fiction the bawdy house had, beyond the improving tracts and bibles that were left there by someone with an ironic sense of humour.

They passed through a darkened corridor and stopped at a large door that loomed over them both in height. Slade pulled out a heavy key from his pocket, spinning it about in his large hand before inserting it into the lock and turning it.

He chose to preface their visit to this mysterious chamber with the words, "You're not the only reclusive guest I have, Felicity. I trust you have not had the pleasure of meeting Mr Barton Mathis?"

The door opened to reveal a dark chamber of cavernous proportions, which greeted its visitors with a distinctive miasma she only encountered one other time, in a house in Lincolnshire belonging to a famous family of physicians.

She detected a movement in the cluttered room; the stir of a statute-like figure that prolonged inspection revealed as the outline of a man.

As was required by etiquette, Slade made the introductions. "Mathis, this lovely lady is Felicity Smoak. Don't let the pretty façade fool you; she's to write me the Kingmaker code I've wanted for a long while."

Felicity dipped into a curtsey to ignore the chill that washed over her, both from the temperature of the room and Slade's words. A clammy hand shot out to fix itself tightly on her jaw before she could draw herself back to her full height.

"Yes…very lovely indeed," murmured Barton Mathis, his leathery thumb stroking the curve of her cheek and leaving a trail of viscid residue on her face. "Especially her complexion…"

Her eyes accustomed themselves to the dim lighting then, and the sinister source of the overpowering odour became apparent: lying on a table in the center of the room was an incomplete corpse composed of mismatched parts, a figure that wore a waxy skin stretching over its sinew and bone. The discarded carcasses from which Mathis had drawn his materials were propped randomly against the walls, surrounded by large ice blocks.

"And how's our Galatea today?" enquired Slade cheerfully, striding over to peer at the cadaver.

Mathis released Felicity and clucked his tongue in disapproval. "She will not be named such a jejune name when I complete her, Slade."

"Mathis here is a pioneer in his research, Felicity. Up with the likes of Dippel when it comes to the science of preservation."

The man being addressed scoffed. "He is but an inexperienced bounder! I am an artist, a true dollmaker."

Slade chuckled, and added, "Mathis's only flaw is his inclination for perfectionism, for each doll must be completed before the onset of rotting. I understand there has been an issue with the time of late?"

"Summer," shuddered Mathis. "Absolutely ghastly for my craft."

"The skin on this one is a tad less refined than your usual fare," observed Slade.

Mathis pouted before grudgingly accepting the criticism. "It was difficult to procure a suitable body. The Frost woman has been tightening her control over the resurrection business and I have been too busy to hand-pick my own materials."

"Well, we might be able to help with that. Wouldn't you agree, my dear, dear Felicity?" There was no mistaking what the glint in his eye meant, a glimmer which was reflected in Mathis's own gaze as he swiveled to fixate on her, or more accurately, the smooth plane of her face.

"I see…" he murmured in delight.

Felicity felt her gorge rise, and choked out, "I must beg your indulgence, gentlemen. If you would excuse me, I seem to have left something behind…"

Her every limb was leaden as she stumbled out of the room and back up the stairs, barely making it to the chamberpot in her room before she emptied the bile that had gathered in her throat in a sob of fear.

She screwed her eyes shut, breathing out in forceful bursts and squeezing her fingers as she desperately tried to rub feeling into them. From outside her room, Wintergreen's dispassionate voice came to inform her that his mater's curricle had been readied and that they could leave immediately.

Felicity rose to her feet shakily, composing herself for the ride with Slade and interaction with the other members of the party.  _It was just a week more_ , she repeated to herself. She was Felix Sherwood, and F. M. Smoak, and more importantly, she was Felicity. She could hold her head high for a week, particularly when she finally had a way out, a safe place to run to.

A pair of blue eyes came to mind then, the cadence of his gentle voice resounding from her memory as she recalled the time when the Duke of Starling had sought to ascertain that she was well, his hand cradling her face in concern.

 _Oliver_ , she thought, swallowing hard and wiping her mouth and the vestige of her meeting with Barton Mathis with a piece of linen Dr Palmer had left in her room. She had to get to Oliver.

* * *

They stopped at an inn for the night, a decision made to ensure that they were adequately invigorated for the immediate commencement of the search for Sara upon reaching Bristol. Tommy had leapt to his feet to facilitate the unloading of their bags, while Laurel sat stiffly in the carriage, waiting for the feeling to come back to her legs.

The carriage door opened and Tommy, well-rested from his short nap, greeted her with his customary grin. "How are you?"

She handed him her parcel, which had sat securely by her side throughout their journey, and stepped into the fading rays of the sun that was dusting his back, her gloved hand in his. "Still not enamoured of travel by carriage, I'm afraid. I hope Joanna fared better."

"She looked fine when I last talked to her," he confirmed, tucking her parcel under his arm.

They were to stay at a hedge-inn to avoid detection – comparatively more likely to occur at the grander Posting Houses, and Laurel inspected its busy ground floor from near the entrance while Tommy went forward to make the necessary arrangements. Its inhabitants were boisterous and mostly male, safe for the odd barmaid whose eyes were all drawn to Tommy's well-dressed figure and noble mien.

Laurel barely refrained from rolling her eyes as one of them approached him with a lusty smile, brushing her bounty of bosom against his upper arm. That was going to be yet another feat of manliness she would have to hear about for months on end.

As she wandered past the first few tables, a series of whistles greeted her every step. She kept her face neutral and carried on until a red-faced man rose to his feet and blocked her path with his body.

"'e name's Fuller," he slurred, rocking to and fro on his feat in an unsteady rhythm. He held a pewter tankard in his right hand, one that he slurped ale from as he said, "Yer a pretty bird."

She bristled at the sobriquet, inasmuch as she was aware that he was alluding to the appellation 'bird of paradise' rather than the nickname she bore in her younger days. Laurel tried for unflappability, "Excuse me."

His attention was elsewhere. "Look, boys!" He gripped her left hand with his meaty paw. "No ring means she's fair game…"

She took a deep breath, tempering the beginnings of a querulous outburst in her. "Sir, kindly unhand my person immediately."

Like the other inhabitants of the inn who had fallen silent to watch better, Tommy had noticed the commotion and was pushing past some men to get to her side.

The idiot who had called himself Fuller wore a taunting jeer on his ruddy face. "Listen to 'er fancy talk! Ha! What yer goin' to do, pretty bird? Cry?"

Laurel reached for the smallest finger on the hand that held her own and yanked hard, bending it over her right thumb and forcing it towards the back of his palm as her grip grew more secure. Her left hand, now free, tightened its hold on her reticule and she smacked him soundly in the face with its hefty weight with a flick of her wrist, which was due to the paperweight she always carried when travelling in unfamiliar or unsafe areas. He dropped his drink onto the ground, crying out.

"No, Mr Fuller," she responded, increasing the pressure on his finger to punctuate her words. "All crying will have to be supplied on your part should you deem it necessary for the occasion, though I would certainly like you to apologise to me."

Tommy reached them then, and began trying to quell the dispute, as his nature inclined him to. "Nothing to see here," he said unconvincingly to a man nearby. "Just a minor miscommunication, I'm sure."

The lout's friends had gotten to their feet, and began ambling towards them, menace in their faces.

"Apologise," Laurel repeated haughtily, imbuing her tone with the force of every deportment and elocution lesson she had to suffer through when growing up to make her the ideal aristocrat's wife.

"Come now, darling," Tommy patted her outstretched arm. "I'm sure the man is sorry."

"Bitch," Fuller spat in her direction, his face contorted in pain.

"I don't think he is," Laurel said flatly. "And his friends need to learn that his behaviour was no way to approach a woman of any ilk before they even think of pummeling others."

"Laurel," Tommy hissed in her ear. "We don't want a fight, much less a brawl."

It took the innkeeper's intervention to appease everyone. "Don't be a nuisance, Max," she snapped. "The lady was minding 'er own business till yer came about, all drunk." To Laurel she said, "Please let him go; he's just a bit soused-like, that's all."

After a pause she released the lout's hand, and he mumbled a curse or two about her as he rubbed the base of his little finger. Laurel ignored him and stepped over the spilled ale and his tankard, weaving through the customers to where Tommy had been speaking to the innkeeper.

She returned to her post behind the table then, Tommy following the stout woman closely. Laurel returned the woman's suspicious look with a cold glance of her own, the frays of her temper still combustible under her stony demeanour.

"Mr and Mrs Drake," the innkeeper pronounced, making a concerted effort to sound like the Quality her prospective customers clearly were. "Not that I don't believe your husband, ma'am, but this is a respectable establishment, and as Old Max Fuller pointed out, I don't see no ring."

Laurel curled her left hand into a fist then, racking her mind for an explanation and mentally berating him for presenting a cover story without firstly informing her of it. Tommy let out a nervous laugh and threw a hand up, putting a small blue box from his coat pocket on the tabletop with the other.

"You're absolutely right, ma'am," Tommy said guilty, popping the box's lid open. "You see, I made a huge error when I bought the engagement ring and this one doesn't fit my missus' dainty hand at all."

The box held an elegant band of silver festooned by a single ruby, which Laurel recognised as a Merlyn heirloom, present in most paintings of previous Lady Merlyns. She picked up the act where he had left off, leaning forward slightly to convey in a confidential manner, "He's so very absentminded… Why, our wedding bands were sent to the address back home in Reading when we wanted them resized in London just because he couldn't quite put his finger on where we would be when they were to be collected…"

The innkeeper seemed satisfied with that explanation, and said, "Well, I only have three rooms tonight, Mrs Drake, only one of which is suitable for you and your husband. Will a shared room be appropriate?"

Laurel opened her mouth to decline, but Tommy slapped a few bills down on the tabletop before she could speak.

"A hot bath and dinner for our room, if you please," he said, capturing her hand in his and tugging her in the direction of the stairs, only pausing to allow the innkeeper to pass and show them the way.

She held back a scowl and allowed him to lead her towards their room.

It was a good half an hour waiting for Joanna to replace the sheets with her own, for a dinner of roast beef stew to be served and for their things to be brought up and laid out correctly before they were alone. Laurel had confined herself to the sole armchair in the room, listening to the creaking of the floorboards while she admitted to herself that the prospect of sharing a room with Tommy disconcerted her.

This was a most irregular situation for women of her breeding, to be alone with a gentleman to whom she was not engaged, much less to spend a night in the same room with him. Laurel had become accustomed to interacting with Tommy without her mother's chaperonage in her home, but the change of locale flustered her greatly and once again she found herself noticing things about him that she had no right to.

There was the way he looked when he offered to help Joanna with the sheets, stripping off his coat to lift the mattress, for one. And when he held the door open for the innkeeper, when she tottered in with the heavy tray carrying their dinner.

Laurel shook her head and walked to the table and stared at the gelatinous mixture of nondescript brown chunks that was supposed to be her dinner instead, trying to summon her appetite. She prodded the stew tentatively with a fork she had insisted be packed from Lance House.

"It's just dinner, Laurel," Tommy sounded amused as he reached past her to pull her chair out for her. He turned his face to her, their height difference such that he could easily look her in the eyes. "There's no need to look so appalled."

Laurel froze, unable to move and exceedingly conscious that he would be able to detect every single little movement in her expression. "…those three little words of yours are most unconvincing," she replied, grateful that she could speak as if none of her earlier thoughts had run rampant in her head. As if his present closeness, which did not exceed the bounds of their established friendship notwithstanding its violation of social mores, was not eliciting a pronounced urge in her to study just how indecently long his eyelashes were.

It was, she mused, probably because she had never seen Tommy in this setting before. Schoolboy-Tommy was a slacker who threw stones at her window to get her to join him and Ollie in the woods. Rake-Tommy was a man exuding devilish charm who sauntered in and out of ballrooms and bordellos, occasionally coming to dance a reel with her as a means of checking in on his friend if he had not paid a call to her that week.

This Tommy was tired, from the shadows under his eyes, and slightly disheveled, the beginnings of his beard showing on his jaw, but insisted on soldiering on in the remaining tasks for the night with a cheery demeanour. This Tommy bent over to help the servants, thanked them for their trouble and was solicitous of her comfort.

Oblivious to her turmoil, Tommy strode to the other side of the table and ate from his plate, watching the slow ascent of her fork to her mouth with bemusement.

"Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world, and now trying to resurrect the poor cow that provided her dinner."

"I beg your pardon, Mr Drake," she sniffed, and then forced herself to take a bite. The meat was tough but the flavor was acceptably robust. "I know not of whom you speak of."

He sobered immediately. "I'm sorry," he said, wiping his mouth with the napkin laid on the table. "I just remembered as we pulled up the road that much as we were unlikely to encounter anyone we know here, I still did not want anyone to speak ill of you for your stay here."

That did not explain why he was carrying the Merlyn ring about in his coat pocket, to be produced easily when called for.

A rap at the door; it was the innkeeper with two helpers to carry the copper bathtub into the room. Laurel and Tommy fell silent as they waited for it to be left behind, and for privacy to be afforded to them.

"Are we to be besieged by highwaymen following your ostentatious display downstairs then?" she asked, when the door closed, her mind on how to broach the topic of the ring indirectly.

He grinned, "Any man who dares approach us after  _your_  display downstairs is a foolish one indeed." Raising his glass, he declared, "A toast to growing up with two selfish boys who hated sharing their toys with little girls! May all other girls who were similarly raised be just as able at putting men in their places as my dear Mrs Laurel Drake!"

"Mrs Laurel Drake?" she repeated, testing the syllables out on her tongue, her mind still on the topic of the ring.

"If you don't like it, we can change your alias when we reach Bristol."

"Dinah," she said decisively. "I always liked that my name alliterated. I want to be Dinah Drake, least of all because I'm more likely to respond when hearing my mother's name."

"Dinah Drake it is then," he conceded, setting down his fork. "Now if Mrs Drake will excuse me, I will head downstairs for a drink so you may take a bath. Please get Joanna to call me when you're done so I can sleep."

She widened her eyes in alarm.

"There's only one bed here," Laurel said. "I thought you would…"

The truth was that she thought he would hunker down in the stables or join his man downstairs for the night. Any pity or sympathy she might have felt for turning him out was steadily eradicated by the fact that he asked for this room fully cognisant about the bedding situation.

It was the bed in the room, she realised. Contrary to the vicious rumour floating about the  _ton_ she had never actually been with a man, previously engaged woman to Lord Oliver or not, and the palpable presence of the bed was wreaking havoc on her abilities to see Tommy as the safe, reliable friend he had always been.

He now laughed, and she was unsure if it was the workings of her imagination or whether there was indeed a roguish edge to his laughter. Heading towards her in a steady gait, he placed a hand on her shoulder to turn her towards him.

"Mrs Drake…I should think it would not be out of place for your husband to give you a goodnight kiss, would it?" he drawled.

She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Tommy leaned in and she heard her breathing hitch as she closed her eyes. She waited, but then she felt his hand remove itself from her person, followed by the sound of his laughter, this time a whooping guffaw that had him wiping at his eyes with the backs of hands.

"You…took me seriously…" he gasped. "I was just…playing around…"

Laurel felt immensely foolish and annoyed as he raised a fist to chuck her under her chin and then walk to the door, snatching his coat off the corner of the bed as he did so.

"I'll sleep on the armchair when I get back, Laurel. Apologies in advance if I disturb your rest."

With the close of the door she sat herself down on the bed, her fingers playing with the buttons of her glove.

It had all been in her head, and she had whipped herself into a vulnerable mass of nerves by countenancing the possibility that Tommy was anything but safe in the space of this room.

This was Tommy. Her best friend, an inveterate womaniser who had kept three mistresses at the same time, but always treated her with the upmost respect and care. Who had stood by her in all crises.

"Weak…" she muttered. That was what she had become for a moment, by alluding to him motives that he could not have. And Laurel Lance had vowed that she would never be weak again.

Joanna entered the room with a creak of the door and Laurel stood up so her maid could undo the buttons on her dress and ready her for her bath.

 _Safe_ , she thought. A Laurel Lance who was not weak would conclude that Tommy was completely safe, that any playing around on his part did not detract from this conclusion or from his value to her as a friend, and that this was the truth she had known for a long while and had to be confident of.

Lord Thomas Merlyn was safe, and she was grateful for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> The original plan was to start the Bristol arc, so much that I wrote half of what will now be chapter 14, whereupon I realised this Laurel scene needed to come in before Sara's introduction and that this content did not fit in thematically at all with what I wrote for Digg. AerynSun75 commented about Felicity and Slade's relationship during my writing process and I realised what I really needed to do was to reallocate the details of that to a proper scene instead of being a flashback, and follow that up with the Merlance scene I really wanted to write. Thank you AerynSun75, and I hope I addressed your questions somewhat.
> 
> The rest of my A/N is on my tumblr (which shares the same name as my account here, because it got too long even for AO3's notes section).
> 
> And now to write what happens in Bristol when everyone seems to be going there, with the exception of Roy, Sin and Felicity. Do let me know what you think; it's really helpful when I get down to writing!


	14. Bristol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was very difficult to write, least of all because the material on Bristol in the 19th century available online is sparse and I'm presently not even in England. It was very important to me that we see it first from Diggle's perspective, least of all because what happens here will have important ramifications for his interaction with Lyla later. I had to do a lot of guesswork as to how a person of African or Carribbean descent would be received in Regency Bristol, inferring from what little records I could find, and then hating and doubting myself whenever I tried to write Diggle's thoughts on it. I sincerely hope that I do not offend anyone in my portrayal of this moment - I did not want to harp on slavery too much but I also did not want to pretend that it was not happening, and that Diggle would be completely oblivious to the historical context. If I have offended, I am very sorry and please send me a message so that I can correct it to be as historically appropriate and sensitive as possible.
> 
> I had very little to work on for the topography as well, barring what little I inferred from re-reading Courtney Milan's Unravelled and frantically trying to google things. Just as a point of comparison, I've never been to Bristol and have read just one book set in the Victorian era there. I've read a whole book on London's 19th century history, not to mention all the HRs set there, and have been to both London and Cambridge. So the Bristol arc, given its themes, context and development, is the hardest I've ever had to guess. I hope I didn't guess too wrong and that you enjoyed this chapter. Sorry in advance to anyone from Bristol who's laughing hard at my sense of geographical bearings.
> 
> Full list of additional references will be up on my blog, assuming you don't want to personally google the significance of each flower and new name mentioned. Also I hope you enjoy seeing Tommy's side of things for the first time!

“You would think that travelling so far would mean a change in the weather, but English skies seem resolutely inclement wherever you go,” John muttered, mostly to himself, as evinced from the lack of response from the Duke of Starling, who was grimly watching the hustle and bustle at Bristol’s newly built Floating Harbour with him. It seemed that Oliver had left his sense of humour, uncharacteristically present over the past two days, back in Cambridgeshire, and reverted to his saturnine ways the moment they left Slade’s estate.

They skirted round the cobbled corner into the city centre, entering a street filled with shops. Donna Smoak had been left in the coaching inn they stayed the night at; still deep in a blissful slumber she had happily fallen into the moment they arrived from travelling without stopping, beyond the time needed to change the horses. John rather envied her, as he tampered down the beginnings of a yawn creeping up on him. It had been three days since he had had a good nights’ sleep, uninterrupted by the duke’s emotional or physical maladies.

As they passed a bookshop or two, he became steadily aware of the fact that he did not draw the same attention he would were they walking on the streets of London. Despite Bristol’s central importance in the slave trade, abolished a mere five years ago, it was also home to a significant community of emancipated slaves and free men, and a hotbed of abolitionist activity, which made his present accoutrements less odd to the man on the street. The high concentration of coloured men in the slums of East London marked him as an anomaly when he was seeing to his duties by himself on Bond Street in London, and even when he accompanied Oliver he still invited stares, much as it was not unheard of for the head of a well-to-do family to have a coloured personal servant.

But now John walked as any other citizen would, anonymous for all purposes beyond the questions about how much he would pay in an establishment, inferred from the refinement of his appearance and quality of clothing.

He adjusted the fit of his coat over his shoulders, shuddering from the strangeness of it all. This was a brave new world he was yet unused to. He rather thought he could become accustomed to it.

They now were in the heart of the city, some distance away from the bustling harbor, but nevertheless in a district that qualified as stolidly middle-class. The economic importance of Bristol dating back to the Middle Ages, possibly even in Roman times, precluded any open spaces from being found in the cramped city conditions, where crooked beams and close-packing was rife, though not to the levels in London. There was no hothouse to be found here.

“I thought we were looking for the proprietor of a hothouse. For flowers,” John addressed the duke. The thought that the hothouse in question might actually be a bordello crossed his mind, and he swallowed and cast a look at the duke for confirmation about the nature of the establishment.

“We are,” Oliver replied, continuing his crushing pace.

John tried for patience. The duke had an irritating tendency to fail to explain himself, and while he was privy to Oliver’s schedule, which put him above the entire Queene family combined, questions like why, who and how were still left unanswered most of the time. “If it will please your grace to explain, what are we doing in the city center where no flowers may be cultivated?”

Oliver came to a standstill before a shop front, indicating the sign on the door with the carved tip of his cane. “It’s a Wednesday.”

The sign above the doorframe was old, aged by constant contact with the salty tang of the air. A gust of cold wind came and disturbed its leisurely hover over the ground, lifting the wooden slab upwards, but John saw that the shop was called ‘ _The Canary’s Posies_ ’. As if to confirm his observation, he noticed a dazzling array of fresh blooms in its window that obscured anything inside from clear view as he came closer to the establishment. On the door itself was a small sign with a message that read, ‘ _Please leave all mail and inquiries here. Requests may be made in person only on Wednesdays._ ’

They entered the shop, and were greeted by more potted flower arrangements, which formed a serpentine path to the sole desk next to the stairwell at the back of the shop’s space on the ground floor. As they followed the meandering direction of the flowers, John identified jonquils, pink carnations, petunias, as well as a smattering of large orange plants each resembling a bird’s beak that he had never seen before.

He heard Oliver clear his throat upon their reaching the desk.

“Excuse me?” Oliver called, retrieving the letter Felicity Smoak had handed to him from the inner pocket of his coat. “May I know if the owner is in today?”

The duke rapped on the table with his knuckles, and his impatience was rewarded by the creaking sound of someone coming down wooden steps. “I’m afraid Mrs Raatko is occupied at the moment,” a female voice responded. “How may I help you?”

All who were present in the room froze as Helena Bertinelli emerged from the flight of stairs leading to the shop front.

It occurred to John later that a woman at a normal level of sanity would have run upon coming face-to-face with her former lover and patron, whom she had left after luring him to his murder. It also occurred to John that a normal woman might have even picked up a pot of nearby daffodils to hurl them in said former lover’s direction, perhaps to hinder his ability to pursue her flight.

All in all, he was rather gratified that his assessment from the outset was true: Helena Bertinelli was no woman at a normal level of sanity.

She emitted a horrifyingly high-pitched cry upon laying eyes on Oliver’s face and reached for the nearest pot to fling into his face. Then she snatched up a pair of what looked like sewing scissors and purported to stab him with them.

John jumped to action, catching her by her armed hand and pulling her backwards before she could reach the duke’s person, as he watched Oliver catch the pot with both hands and set it down behind him. It took him mere minutes to twist her arm into an unnatural position behind her back, and gently apply force to encourage her to drop the scissors. A grab of her other wrist, and Helena Bertinelli was pinned facedown to the table with her hands behind her, sufficiently trussed up for Oliver to interrogate.

“Let me go,” she spat, struggling to no avail under John’s hold. He leaned slightly forward to put his weight on her and she stopped squirming.

“Helena,” said Oliver, as he put his appearance to rights. “We need you to answer a few of my questions.”

There was the sound of another person descending the stairs and a blonde woman dressed in dark blue appeared, a cross expression on her face. Stopping midway, she surveyed the fractious tableaux and glared at the duke.

“Ollie,” she said imperiously, her hand on the bannister tightening its grip. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Ollie?” echoed the Bertinelli woman.

 _Ollie?_ John thought. The only people in the duke’s acquaintances that addressed him as such numbered few, and were all family and childhood friends.

“This is not what it looks like, Sara,” Oliver began, and John racked his mind for any person with that name. _Sara Lance_ , he guessed. That was the only person with that name in his file on the Duke of Starling who could possibly call him ‘Ollie’.

“Good, because it looks like your man is attacking one of my guests, and it sounded like hell was being raised before I came down. Please release Helena immediately.”

John shook his head adamantly. “Not unless she gives her word that she will not attack his grace, ma’am,” he said.

To his surprise, the woman complied with his requirement. “Helena will not attack Oliver unless she wants me to turn her out for the night. Now, release her.”

He did as asked, and Helena sprung to her feet, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Ever the gentleman, Oliver pulled out a white handkerchief John had stayed up last night to press and offered it to the virago. She snatched it out of his hand without so much as a thank-you before she held it up to her face.

As Helena Bertinelli daubed the edges of her mouth with the duke’s handkerchief, she cachinnated, rocking slightly back on her heels from the humour she alone partook of.

“You’re Sara Lance…” she finally uttered between shallow breaths. “You’re the woman he ruined at the age of seventeen, leaving your own sister stranded at the altar…”

The blonde woman John presumed to be Sara Lance did not look amused at the sordid recount of her past. “Yes, well, it didn’t quite happen like that,” she stated, turning her blue eyes to Oliver’s person. “What are you doing in Bristol?”

“A request from a friend,” he replied, holding out the letter he had been charged to deliver to her. Her lips pursed as she scrutinised the scribble-like mark that franked the front of the envelope.

“I will be going upstairs to read my mail,” she announced. “You may conduct your conversation here insofar it is, in fact, a conversation, and everyone emerges with their limbs intact. Do not disturb the plants or I will turn my gardener on you, and I assure you that it is me you would rather deal with.”

With a toss of her head, she turned and disappeared up the stairs.

John caught Oliver’s eye. “Do you have any women in your acquaintance, whom you’re not related to, that are not deranged in any way?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You liked Felicity.”

“Excuse me?” The Bertinelli woman made a sound of outrage at the same time.

John waved a hand in Helena’s direction to indicate that the duke should probably start cross-examining her and strode to the shop’s window to give him a measure of privacy. The streets outside were peppered with shoppers, both casual and determined, and a family just a stone’s throw away caught his eye in particular.

The woman looked like any other ordinary shopkeeper’s wife he could find in London, but her husband’s delight at something she said was as evident as the swarthy complexion he shared with their young mulatto boy.

The War Office did not, as a matter of principle, encourage its operatives to be too aware of local politics and happenings, and John had been told strictly that no amount of abolitionist sympathies he harboured could be allowed to compromise his work. Nevertheless he had heard of mixed marriages in some parts of Britain, despite never seeing one with his own eyes thus far.

His brow furrowed, just as the corners of his mouth lifted. _Lyla_ , his traitorous mind thought, just as his equally treasonous heart responded with a pang of longing as the family walked past the shop, the father swinging his son onto his shoulders mid-step to raise him up.

John had loved Lyla from the moment he had first laid eyes on her when she came to stay at her father’s estate Colyton at the age of ten, accompanying the baronet on one of his infrequent visits to Devon when he sought to discharge his duties as the Member of Parliament for Honiton. He had not known it then, but the questions Sir George had asked of him and his brother when he invited them to share in lessons with his daughter’s governess were part of the Secretary at War’s plan to recruit them for the impending war with Napoleon. He had worked hard at those lessons, savouring every moment he could best the annoying little girl whom insisted on calling him ‘Johnny’ – as if he was still a small boy when he had a couple of years on her – and whom stuck her tongue out at him whenever her governess was not looking.

Age and experience taught him what his youthful fixation on her reactions to his progress in studies really was, cemented by the many letters she had sent to him when he was in Flanders and in India. John loved her – completely, painfully and unconditionally. He had thought of marrying a good woman as did his brother several times over the years and starting a family, but even as she had married, as was expected of a young woman of good breeding like herself, the torch that he would always carry for her stopped him.

It would always be Lyla for him, and to give less of himself to a woman would only break her heart, as he had witnessed Carly’s break while she devoted herself to trying to nurse Andy back to his former self in their marriage.

“…they gave me coin, and so I sent the message to you. My betraying kiss to your cheek, as it was. I do not know their purpose.” Helena Bertinelli sounded weary of the topic, and her lithe form was slouched over as she perched her elbows on the edge of the table.

John’s attention transferred to their conversation in time to hear Oliver demand, “Let me ask you again, Helena. Who’s ‘they’?”

His voice had altered sometime during the exchange, and the one that questioned Helena now was guttural, almost animal in quality. Oliver’s face was contorted into a menacing glower, and John felt the hairs on the back of his hand horripilate from the threat exuded by the duke’s whole person.

There were times when John wondered if throwing his lot in with the present Duke of Starling was the right thing to do. He had often sensed this feral urge simmering under the duke’s external façade, particularly when Oliver had an upsetting encounter during the day, such as when he was forced by social convention to ride in a carriage, or in the brief times he had spoken of his father’s murder.

The duke was a man who had killed and would kill again if sufficiently provoked, he had no doubt. It said much about John himself that the type of provocation that would prompt Oliver’s lethal action was one he adjudged to justify retaliation by homicide.

Helena apparently also felt the intimidating effect of the duke’s aura, because she huffed and said, “I only dealt with a man, whom I understood to be a mere courier. But he referred to his employer the last time I saw him, when he delivered my payment. He called him ‘Stellmoor’.”

John stirred, for he knew that name. He kept silent now, waiting for a more opportune time to raise that information to Oliver, who was steadily retreating back to the polite mask he wore when in public.

“Thank you, Helena,” the duke finally said. “I appreciate your assistance.”

She snorted, “It’s the least you could do after forcing me to run off with what little I could carry by getting yourself stabbed in my rooms.” She swung a leg upwards, studying the top of the shoe that peeped out of her heavy skirts as she continued, “That oaf bodyguard of yours was poking round the theatre first thing the next day, claiming that I had injured his employer, and the next thing I knew, I was fired by the manager with nowhere to go.”

Helena looked at John as she broke off. “He doesn’t even have the decency to look apologetic.”

“I’m sorry you lost your job,” said Oliver, “but Diggle was doing his.”

 She snapped to a straighter sitting position, knees quivering with excitement and her hands in her lap so she could lean towards Oliver. “…and now I get the nice ducal treatment. When you first approached me, your grace, all everyone told me about was how you were a deliciously naughty blackguard that ruined his fiancée’s little sister. And now after a few weeks of listening to you murmur the former fiancée’s name in your sleep, I see the way you look at her sister…and the way you question people. Who are you really, your grace? And which sister is it that you really love?”

John did not know what she was on about. The duke grew wistful and morose whenever he returned from an encounter with Miss Lance and his brief interaction with Miss Sara only indicated an awkwardness born of familiarity between them. There were strong feelings, certainly, but not ones that John would label with the way he understood love.

He had never seen Oliver gaze at any woman the way John watched Lyla when she was not looking.

John cleared his throat now, to alert them to the arrival of the younger Lance sister.

“Oliver, where is the elder Miss Smoak at present?” The woman Helena had addressed as Mrs Raatko asked, treading off the last step of the staircase and bearing the letter in her hand, which John noticed had a ring.

“I have her housed in the Full Moon,” Oliver replied.

Sara considered the information, and swept a glance over her shop. “I will come with you to retrieve her. Helena, if you could watch the shop until I come back?”

Helena nodded begrudgingly, raising her eyes heavenward as she did so.

“I’ll be back soon.” Sara went back into the private quarters of the shop – to fetch a bonnet and gloves, John saw – and led the way out. As he joined her on the streets, she flashed him a tentative smile, a hand raised to push back a stray strand of her hair.

She opened her mouth to address him directly, which somehow did not astonish him despite it being a breach of social etiquette for a woman to speak to someone she had not been introduced to. In all fairness there was something distinctively unorthodox about the whole morning anyway.

“Oliver has neglected all introductions altogether, but considering the circumstances of our meeting, I suppose it would not be impertinent to simply state that I’m Sara Raatko.”

He bowed, identifying the last name she used as Arabic in origin, which would not raise much suspicion in a port city like Bristol, barring the fact that its owner was entirely Anglo-Saxon in appearance. The name was familiar – the Office had spoken at length of a vizier from the Ottoman Empire by the same name during the Anglo-Turkish war which had concluded just three years ago.

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs Raatko. I am John Diggle, his grace’s valet and your humble servant.”

She beamed, and then turned back to Oliver. “Shall we then, your grace?” She had stressed the last two words and sounded almost playful as she voiced them.

Oliver did not dignify her formal address of him with a response and started solemnly forward in the direction of the inn, leaving them both to scramble to catch up. Once again John did not fail to notice that he drew no stares from the other inhabitants of the pavement, all of whom were going about their business with no reaction to him.

The woman that had been Sara Lance strode by him exuberantly with a spring to her every step, emitting a soft hum to fill the silent void that was Oliver and John’s contribution to the conversation.

The tune she was humming belonged to a nursery rhyme he had heard before, a song by the cryptic name of ‘Birds of Prey’ commonly heard when nannies escorted their charges to Hyde Park.

“Mr Diggle. You know of my family in London,” she finally said to John, more of a statement than a question.

He inclined his head downwards in affirmation.

“How are they?”

John hesitated. He was not well-versed with the comings and goings of the Lance family, since his assignment had always been focused on the Queenes, and his present commitment to help Oliver solve his father’s murder had only heightened that focus. What little he knew of the Lances did not go far beyond the summary in the report he had received on the Duke of Starling himself, that Oliver had ruined Sara Lance and so disgraced his fiancée and childhood friend Laurel, drawing Viscount Lance’s ire. There was an additional line that Sara Lance had disappeared from London, and her whereabouts were hitherto unimportant enough to the War Office to track. His own observations were that the Lances avoided Oliver at the rare social gatherings when they were all present, and that though physically well, neither the viscount nor his eldest daughter appeared happy.

Sara spoke then, clearly interpreting his silence wrongly. “Did Oliver instruct you not to speak of them to me? That infuriating man… You might be wondering why I would ask you instead of him, but the truth is that he’s been extremely highhanded each time I enquire, and keeps saying that I should go back to London to see them myself. As if I can ever return after what has happened…”

“You could send someone to keep you updated,” said John, frowning. It was becoming readily apparent that someone needed to fully explain to him what had happened between Oliver and Sara five years ago, which had brought her to this city as the proprietor of a hothouse, and apparently, someone who sheltered destitute women.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But it would have to be someone with access to my family by virtue of class, for Oliver has refused me access to his little network of spies, and my work keeps me too busy to send my own person. Moreover, Nyssa hates London with a passion and never wants to go there when she comes to England.”

There was deep affection and a beleaguered humour to the way she had pronounced ‘Nyssa’.

“Nyssa Raatko. Eldest daughter of the vizier better known as the Demon’s Head for his military prowess among the Ottoman Sultan’s Imperial Council,” Sara said, her eyes daring him to ask about the relationship between the two women. “The Lances would receive such a personage, wouldn’t you think? If not for the recent war, of course. We must thank the Treaty of the Dardanelles for removing some of the awkwardness.”

John considered his next words very carefully. “Have you been in Bristol this whole time over the past five years?”

“Oh yes, apart from the occasional trip to the Continent when convenient. The war being one of my impediments, especially when the Ottoman Empire clashed with our British interests.”

“And your Turkish friend…does she visit?”

Sara smiled. “Naturally. You may have noticed, Mr Diggle, that Bristol does not operate as rigidly by the rules, rules we have internalised by now, as in London. The constant motion of ship schedules, the incessant coming and goings of peoples of all walks… It is a space created by anonymity, one where anyone may define happiness differently from the mere acquiring of land and social position. I do not presume to know what sort of challenges you face, but my disposition has been to prefer the happiness I can decide.”

“Are you happy, then, Mrs Raatko? If it is not too forward of me to ask...”

She flushed with pleasure, her face a beatific picture of contentment as the corners of her lips raised and she seemed to be thinking of something or someone as she formed her answer. “Incandescently.”

They stopped at the façade of the Full Moon Inn, which had originally been built to accommodate visitors to the nearby St James’s Churchyard. Oliver passed through the iron arch over the yard entrance, into which visitors were still streaming in and out, testament to the inn’s central importance in the public stage-coach network that dominated travel in England.

“I hope you have time and money, Ollie,” said Sara, as the three of them passed the sash windows and entered the building. “We are going to have to buy Donna Smoak a new wardrobe.”

* * *

Tommy regretted dearly his rash actions the night before. Laurel had said nary a word to him in the morning and had launched directly into her search for Sara when they reached Bristol at midday, barring the most cursory of instructions about their plan of action when they stopped briefly at his family’s townhouse in Clifton.

They were in the Stag and Hounds in Old Market, where the city’s Tolzey Court could be found in the large panelled room on the upper floor on certain days. There was no hearing at present, but the public house was teeming with travellers with dusty feet all the same.

He watched Laurel push past the crowd as she descended the stairs, pausing to place a hand on the railing’s twisted balusters whenever she gave way to another person. For ease of travel they had agreed to leave her maid at his house, on the pretext that they would still be posing as Mr and Mrs Drake.

“No one seems to recognise this,” said Laurel, finally reaching his side. In her hand was a miniature that Sara had gifted her, a self-portrait of reasonable-likeness.

Tommy tried to take the miniature from her, not missing the way her fingers twitched and her expression froze when his gloved hand brushed hers. He tried not to dwell upon the way she snatched her hand back to her chest as he lifted the picture to inspect it better.

“I must say her talents lay in painting others, not herself,” he observed, feigning the flippant air that he had always used to hide his true feelings of hurt since childhood.

Laurel tilted her head in perfunctory agreement, opening her hand to demand the portrait’s return. As part of their guise, the Merlyn ring was on her finger, and Tommy stared at the silver band as he dropped the miniature into the centre of her palm.

 _Who’s pathetic now?_ He asked himself.

Unaware of his thoughts, Laurel went back to the bar, intent on asking the barmaids and servers once again if they could identify the woman in the portrait.

The Merlyn family jewels would certainly suit her complexion, he mused. Each generation of Lady Merlyn had a string of rubies and ear bobs to match the ring she now wore, and she could even wear the bracelet he bought her years ago. That was the only reason why he bought it then, as an oblique hint to the burgeoning feelings that plagued him, a reference that no one else would have understood but him.

At sixteen her eyes were like bright stars from the sky when they landed on Oliver, and at eight and twenty he was still an abysmal poet who was entirely besotted by the Honorable Miss Laurel Lance.

Laurel had been cold and distant throughout their travel that morning, which pointed to her private uncertainties. Where he compensated for his insecurities and despair by laughing louder and making more outrageous jokes, she would withdraw into herself, seemingly entirely focused on the completion of a task and distant to all who spoke to her until she could work out how they related to each other, or restore her external world to rights with the grand inner vision she had.

Laurel was someone who hated not knowing exactly what to do and how to react, and this morning’s icy demeanour had been entirely targeted at him. This meant that he was the problem in question that bothered her.

He sighed, wondering if it was better to apologise about his little prank last night or just pretend it never happened.

The worst thing about the whole situation was, that had been no joke on his part. There had to be something in the beef stew last night, or perhaps the unfamiliar surroundings had addled his pate, but when he approached her, he had fully believed that he would finally kiss her for the first time, something that had hitherto only been the subject of his fevered dreams.

Then he saw her flinch, and doubt came crashing in like the proverbial floodgates had been opened, his irritating tendency towards insecurity rising to the fore to wrest control from what lunacy and confidence that had governed his actions up to that point.

 _This was Laurel, the most important woman in the world_ , he thought. _What if he hurt her?_

A small part of him also asked, _What if she did not see him as a man so much that she hated his kiss?_

So Lord Thomas Merlyn did the one thing he knew how to do best. He laughed, hard, and pretended that the tears that came to his eyes were of mirth, just as he had done when his father had curled his lips with disgust upon Tommy’s falling off his horse at the age of five, and just as he had done when his father received a letter of complaint from his tutors at Oxford.

He laughed, because when one laughed the world could not laugh at the hurt feelings that welled up in one’s heart, and had to laugh together with you at what a fucking colossal joke your whole life was.

He could even laugh now, because it appeared that he had still managed to screw up the one good thing in his life, in the way she was avoiding him.

Life was a joke, but at least it was funny.

Laurel came back then, her eyes glimmering with hope.

“Tommy,” she cried, obviously forgetting the alias they were travelling under. “He says he has seen someone like this!”

He shook himself out of his reverie, and renewed his attention on the search. “Whereabouts did our informant see her?”

“That man there says a similar-looking woman by the name of ‘Mrs Raatko’ frequents a florist on Wednesdays, a shop located a few streets from here…” She frowned in thought. “Yes, that should be within the area that the runner I sent spoke of…”

Tommy pulled out her parcel from where it had been under his arm and offered his elbow to her. “Shall we take the curricle straight there then? What is the place called?”

She was bubbling with excitement, her previous discomfort entirely forgotten for the moment, as she spoke of being reunited with her sister. “What do you think she’s been doing, Tommy? Do you think she’s been living well? Why does she keep going to that florist? She was never one to love flowers…”

Her animated chatter did not cease as he took his reins in hand, her own hands busy with fiddling with her parcel’s wrapping. They turned into a street filled with shops, looking for a sign that read ‘ _The Canary’s Posies_ ’ amidst the bookstores and cobblers.

“There!” Laurel exclaimed, clutching at his hand to direct their vehicle.

Tommy bit back a smile. _How like Laurel to attempt taking control of the reins_ , he thought, bringing them to just before the shopfront. He passed her the reins when they drew to a stop and dismounted, crossing over to Laurel’s side to help her down.

The shop door opened then, and two blonde women emerged. One was a middle-aged woman he had never set eyes on before, and the other, shorter one, was unmistakably the Sara that had been something of a wild hellion who failed to follow the instructions of her elders whenever they had played together as children.

She was dressed in a dress of navy blue and seemed to be leaving the premises, her face turned back as if she was giving instructions to someone. Another figure, this time male, bearing parcels of all sizes piled higher than his head, came out of the shop.

The man leaned to the side to better hear Sara’s words, and a sinking feeling hit Tommy’s gut as he recognised his best friend, the Duke of Starling.

 _Bloody hell_ , he nearly said out loud, fearing to think of what impact the sight would have on Laurel as he whipped his head round to look at her.

Laurel’s face was inscrutably glacial, and she had pulled back the hand she was about to put in his, to tighten her hold on the reins of his curricle. She flicked her wrist before he could utter a single syllable of restraint, and off went the vehicle at top speed, careening towards an uncertain destination insofar its driver was in the furor of her roiling emotions.


	15. Harbour

Oliver blinked with confusion.

Laurel stood some paces away from him, backed up against a corner, regarding him with horror and a savagery usually only seen in cornered prey. She fumbled behind her and then hurled something – a dislodged stone at him.

“Don’t you dare come near!”

He saw that her gown was ragged, the edge of her petticoat peeking out from beneath a hem that had been suddenly dropped from the height at which it had been raised. Her face was pale, save for the streaks of dirt and a nick on her jawline, a single thread of red in a mask of white.

Stepping forward, he raised his hands with the intention to calm her, only to stop abruptly.

His hands were dripping with blood, as was the cruel, jagged knife gripped in his left.

Oliver glanced down then, and saw that his clothes were too soaked with blood, and that five bodies surrounded them, each one a twisted carcass that bore brutal lacerations which could only have been inflicted by a blade of the size he was still wielding.

He dropped the weapon, snatches of recollection coming to his mind. Upon hearing Tommy’s hastily cried “Laurel, no!” he had put the shopping down. All questions of what both parties were individually doing in Bristol were put aside as he followed Sara’s line of vision, in time to glimpse the back of Tommy’s curricle vanish round the corner.

“That goes directly towards Redcliffe, if she follows the road,” Sara thought out loud. “Near Temple – the slanting church.”

“Is it safe?” urged Tommy, his eyes frantically searching the street for a horse, or a hack, that he could appropriate.

Sara made it a point to look emphatically at Oliver as she replied. “No.”

Oliver had run then, darting past the people that had been forced to the side by Laurel’s mad dash, and ducking into a dark alley at first opportunity, all his thoughts on getting to the slums of the city. A stray cat brushed past him with a startled meow at the disturbance to the otherwise tranquility of the narrow space.

Placing a hand on the surrounding rough bricks, Oliver leaned his weight on it before scaling it. The route that Laurel had taken was too crowded, rendering it too difficult for him to pursue her on foot. He pushed himself up onto the roof, bringing him above the city’s sounds and smells, and surveyed the world beneath his feet.

A few streets away, the top of a fast-moving curricle spun round another corner.

Taking a few steps back to give him a running start, he leaped to the next roof and the next, the lack of recent practice apparently having little detrimental effect to his agility. He drew no attention from the city dwellers, who went about the humdrum drudgery of their daily lives like little marionettes below. As he neared Temple Church’s precarious tilt, he lowered himself to the ground with the aid of two conveniently positioned windowsills, ear trained on any irregularities in the sounds of the neighbourhood.

Redcliffe was a rough place, one that rivaled the slums of London in dilapidation and viciousness. His clothes and stature called attention to his status as a stranger to the neighbourhood, and he could feel the weight of many eyes on his person as he wove through the narrow meander of haphazard streets, protected only by the menacing aura he put on like a cloak.

Laurel screamed, he now recalled. He had followed the sound to see her fending off five thugs valiantly with a cane, the overturned curricle lying behind her to cut off her escape. As he rushed towards her, she was overpowered by two of the men and forced up against a wall, a knife to her throat while her main assailant reached down to lift the hem of her skirt.

Oliver remembered little of the carnage that happened next, save for the rage that had overtaken his senses, and the sound of bones snapping and men choking as they drowned in their own blood.

Blood that now stained his person and which was reflected in the horror in her green eyes.

“Laurel,” he tried to say, but his voice was hoarse and what emerged was a low rasp that only intimidated her more. He took a step forward.

“Stay back!” She had managed to relocate Tommy’s cane and was brandishing it to deter his approach.

“It’s me,” he stated, taking another small step forward, willing his voice to return to its usual tones. “It’s Ollie.”

She waved the cane hard to hit him as he came closer to her, and he felt the beast within him stir again, prompting the hard force with which he curled a hand round the tip of the cane and ripped it out of her grip.

Oliver reeled back in alarm. _This is Laurel_ , he told himself, but all the same he had sunk into a defensive fighting stance, a reaction to the way she all but snarled at him. Backing away, he blinked again, trying to clear his head.

He realised that he did not trust himself not to harm her in his present state, should she first strike.

The quick patter of two sets of footsteps brought Sara and Tommy to the same alley, and he watched Laurel’s tenseness crumple into relief as Tommy rushed past him to her side.

“Tommy…” she muttered dazedly, as he perused her for visible injuries, her empty hands wrung before her.

“You’re safe,” reassured Tommy in a gentle voice, for both his and Laurel’s sake. He had a hand on her temple that was stroking her hair back in a rhythmic manner. “You’re safe now.”

Sara strode past Oliver to hand Tommy a blanket for her sister, surveying the surrounding gore with undisguised disgust. Kicking a nearby carcass with vehemence, she gave Oliver another blanket, having obviously delayed her arrival to procure them.

“Well, I can’t say I did not expect this when I entrusted her safety to you.” She thrust two fingers into her mouth and whistled sharply, a summoning of a person or persons to do her will. “I’ll get this mess cleaned up, but in the meanwhile you may all come to my house for medical supplies and hot tea.”

 

It was not an invitation but an imperative.

Sara’s house was more accurately described as an Elizabethan manor, constructed out of stone and timber and lying on the outskirts of the city. As they pulled up to the main door, a woman wearing a shapeless, rough smock ran up to the carriage and horses.

“Sara, you simply mustn’t allow Nyssa to wander into my garden when she visits,” fumed the woman, forcefully tearing off her smock with a hand to reveal a frock of deep green. “Just look at what she left among my bulbs from her stay last week!”

Her other hand was gloved in tan leather, and held a grimy _zihgir_. It had been a long time since Oliver seen such a thumb ring used for drawing bows in the Ottoman Empire. This _zihgir_ was made of leather, with a semi-precious stone embedded on the outer side of the flat portion that protected the thumb from a bowstring.

Sara chuckled, taking the ring in her bare hand and turning it over. “How like her to leave valuable things just about anywhere…” She dismounted, and Oliver followed suit, his movement somewhat clumsy from having to hold a blanket over his person to prevent the bloody remnants of his time in central Bristol from being advertised to all.

“We have guests, Pam. Have cook set the table for four more places, and a basin of water to Oliver’s room for now.”

Sara’s gardener registered Oliver’s presence then, and scowled.

“You again.” She said, clearly displeased with the fact of his appearance.

“Miss Isley,” he bowed politely.

“Touch my ferns again this time and I’ll poison you.”

As the redhead made death threats to Oliver, Sara crossed over to her carriage and opened the door to let its passengers out.

“Welcome to Canary Court. Donna, this will be your home until Felicity’s situation is resolved. Laurel, Tommy, I hope you will make yourselves comfortable for the length of time you wish to stay.”

They were ushered into the house, which had changed little since the time Oliver had found his way there two years ago, from the curve of the balustrade to the stained glass of the windows. Helena was promptly instructed to take Donna to her room and both women slinked up the stairs, arm in arm.

Oliver stood awkwardly in the entrance hall while Sara’s priority of seeing to her sister was next realised. Laurel ceased shaking since her encounter in Redcliffe but was unusually subdued, her unfocused eyes resolutely downcast even when addressed.

Sara made to ask her how she felt, and whether she would like to have anything with her tea.

“Don’t touch me.” Laurel shrugged off the hand her sister had placed on her arm. Her voice was an icy tone Oliver recognised all too well, having been at the end of that more times than he could count.

Sara frowned, the little dimple in her chin becoming more obvious as she pursed her full lips with worry. Tommy, who had an arm around Laurel’s shoulders and was holding her up, shot Sara a glance.

 _She needs time_ , he mouthed.

“Miss Isley,” Oliver said, to draw attention away from the situation. “My man will be following shortly with some valises. May I know if you could direct me to where they should be placed?”

Pamela Isley was no fool, exchanging a meaningful look with Sara before she turned the full force of a contemptuous sneer at Oliver. She thrust her discarded gardening apparel at him. “This way, your grace.”

She did not wait for him to follow as she strode away, while Oliver bent to pick up the stray glove that had fallen to the ground, scattering soil on the carpet. It appeared Pamela had yet to forgive him for killing one of her plants by accident when he last came to stay.

Oliver was led to a room at the back of the house, one that was appointed to a woman’s tastes and for a woman’s use like every other chamber in Canary Court.

“Water will be coming soon, your grace.”

The way she pronounced the final two words was more of a derogatory epithet than an address of honour. Oliver was grateful for the silence and privacy of the furnished chamber, when he was left to his devices a few moments after, the promised basin of water having been duly delivered and placed for his convenience next to the mirror.

He exhaled, running a hand up the row of buttons on his coat before he undid them systematically, pacing to the center of the room as he did so. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the large mirror at the dresser, and paused, his cravat hanging loosely in his hand and his shirt lying open.

There was a streak of dried blood across his face, like a tell-tale slit of guilt marking the bridge of his nose. He traced the mirrored stain with his fingertips, turning his face to the side as he followed its path.

There, splattered on the snowy white of his collar, was more damasked evidence of his inner rot showing on outer rectitude.

Cutting a man’s throat open tended to be a very messy business, and he had killed two men that way that afternoon. He had torn the other three apart as well, his innate dexterity applied to a flurry of fractured limbs and ruptured skin.

Oliver lowered his hand to the reflection of his bare throat. He had not shaved last night, and he barely recognised the haggard face that peered back at himself now. The man in the mirror had a five o’clock shadow that no man would allow himself to sport in decent company, and though the killing aura that had unsettled Laurel so had since dissipated somewhat, he could still feel that restlessness simmering under his dispassionate exterior, ready to be unleashed against anyone who proved a threat to him, even if it was someone he loved.

Having replayed the events of that afternoon over and over in his mind on his way here, he was certain that there was a distinct possibility he might have killed or at least seriously injured Laurel in that alley. She had shown no signs of backing down then, instead seemingly intent on fighting him off until Tommy appeared and she finally lapsed into a state of withdrawal.

In that terrible moment while Oliver still held the cane he had wrenched from her control, the feral side of him that had kept him alive all through those five years was ready to assault the woman he had once thought to marry and live with.

Oliver’s mouth twisted into a derisive leer, the raised hand on the mirror curling into a hard ball and his knuckles met its cool surface.

“Monster,” he pronounced slowly, and smashed his fist through the looking glass, the physical sensation of pain coursing through his dominant hand affording him some satisfaction.

“That was not your mirror to break,” observed Sara’s voice from behind him.

He turned to see her standing in his doorframe, a couple of linen rolls clutched to her chest.

“It wasn’t yours either, Mrs Raatko.”

“True,” she acknowledged. “But neither of the women bankrolling Canary Court’s expenses will like to know that their funds are going towards appeasing brooding blackguards.”

Sara closed the door behind her, striding towards him as she aimed to set down the linens next to the basin.

“Is that what I am called these days, Sara? You forgot cold-blooded murderer of five men, assuming we cap the sobriquet at my daily accomplishments, of course.”

“They tried to violate Laurel,” she bit out, her eyes flashing with anger. “They do not even deserve the unmarked grave I had their bodies pitched into. I would I were the one to kill them today, if not for the need to ensure everything was secure at the shop, and to keep Tommy from getting killed the moment he stepped into Redcliffe.”

 “You did what you had to.”

“So did you. You were quick, Ollie, and for that I am grateful.”

She stopped speaking and ran a hand over her face, before picking up a roll of linen and dipping it into the water with the other. Oliver threw up his hands in anticipation of what she was about to do as she drew the sopping cloth out and wrung it, her movements quick and efficient. She smacked his restraining hands away and brought it to his face.

“How is she now?” asked Oliver, holding still for her ministrations, his injured hand smarting from her light blow.

“I don’t know. She’s drunk quite a lot of the brandied tea I had sent up but I haven’t had the privilege of seeing her.” Her face contorted into a half-grimace, half-smile. “You don’t get to be the wet blanket today, Ollie,” she said, drubbing away at the stubborn bloodstain on his face to punctuate her words. “You’re not the one who has reunited with her sister under inauspicious circumstances. She’s refused to see me. Or come down for dinner.”

Oliver relaxed his frown then, placing his uninjured hand on her hair to better look at her. Sara’s eyes were filled with hot tears, and she stared at the remaining red spots on his neck as she uttered softly, “She said that she had no sister. That I died five years ago.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, she swallowed, and rubbed away the last of the blood on his face. As she raised her eyes to meet his, she said in a shaky voice, “I fear I have lost her forever.”

Waves of pity and compassion washed over him, and he summoned up what little cheer he could to flash her a small smile. “Laurel just needs time,” he said, echoing Tommy in the entrance hall earlier.

Sara’s brows drew together, and she disengaged herself from the touch of his hand in ire. “Laurel does not need time. Laurel is the most idealistic person there is, and she’s not going to forgive me if she cannot agree with the principle of what I did.” She thrust the unclean linen into the basin with a splash, and swirls of cloudy red appeared in the water.

“You could explain to her what happened and why it did happen,” offered Oliver, even as a sinking feeling in his gut told him how wrong he was. They had both ill-used Laurel and the entire Lance family. They could expect no forgiveness.

“You know that she will not care a whit about my reasons insofar I have chosen for myself, Ollie. And I have. I chose to betray her, to run away, and expose my family to ridicule before the _ton_. I’ve not been wilfully blind all these years, you know. I’ve gone back to London like you said. On several occasions.” She swallowed again, her shoulders taut from her attempt to retain self-control. “…I know my mother is ill. I know my father has been driven to distraction and that Laurel - I left her to the dogs I myself feared. Dogs that I did not want to face upon my coming out. How can I ask for forgiveness, for clemency now?”

“Sara,” Oliver said, because he had to say something, inasmuch as he had no words of encouragement, nothing he could utter save for the thought that she could not be irredeemable, because he knew what irredeemable was. Irredeemable was reserved for the face that stared back at his in the mirror, the person who had tried to kill the woman whom he had wanted to marry, the woman who had been his dream.

“There is no forgiveness to those who have acted as I did, Ollie. Even if I’ve tried to pay back seventy-seven times everything that I’ve effected onto my family and friends by becoming the Canary. You know that as well as I do.”

Her eyes were shining, and he came up to her, desperate to assist in some way. _You are a good person_ , he thought, as he placed a gentle thumb on her cheek to wipe away the tear that rolled downwards. _You are not an irredeemable monster_.

Sara stood still and let him hold her for a spell, inhaling with some effort as she tried to contain the riot of emotions within her. “We used to do this as children,” she murmured, as his comforting hand was replaced by the gentle press of his lips to her closed eyelids.

“Mmm,” he agreed, stroking her hair. Laurel might have been his dream, the ideal woman that he wanted to make his duchess, but he had never treated Sara as a sister. They had fallen into a pattern where they never needed to communicate their hurts to share the pain, and the comfort they showed each other was equally wordless, to fulfill the ache that they could not derive from the starched surroundings of their world.

Sara had Nyssa now, and Oliver used to have Laurel, but this was no caress of lust or love – not a betrayal in any way in his mind, because he had never shared a similar feeling with his then intended.

Sometimes one just needed to be held, merely for the hope that the physical sensation could approximate a harbour of affection still open for one to return to.

The door opened and Diggle entered, bearing two valises. The valet’s eyes widened as he spied their embrace, and then his gaze travelled downward in a thorough survey of Oliver’s person, not missing the residual bloodstains on his open shirt.

Oliver made no move to release Sara, although she flinched slightly at the invasion of their privacy and drew back from him.

“Diggle. I was involved in an altercation with some men who attacked Miss Lance,” Oliver explained, as Sara tried to set her appearance to rights, rubbing at her eyes and pinching her cheeks to restore some colour to her face.

Visibly relaxing but no less disapproving, Diggle placed the valises down and opened them with a professional briskness. “Will your grace be dressing for dinner?”

“No,” Oliver denied.

“Yes,” Sara said, turning an entreating eye to him. “Please.”

Oliver nodded and she left them, leaving him to watch Diggle set out attire suitable for the formal occasion that was to be dinner. It was unlike him to be so taciturn about Oliver’s activities, especially when his opinion was written clearly in his face and actions.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked his valet.

“It wouldn’t be my place, your grace.”

Oliver stripped off his shirt and picked up the one that Diggle had laid out for him. “Come now. John Diggle with no comment on what he has just witnessed?” He pulled the shirt over his head, adopting a drier tone as he did so. “No ‘I would appreciate if your grace could endeavour to keep this set of clothes clean until we can return to London’?”

The man paused, before he uttered, “Something is bothering you, Oliver. It may be the same thing that was evidently of concern to Mrs Raatko, but I am inclined to think that it is something else altogether. Perhaps related to your fight this afternoon.”

Oliver said nothing, and Diggle held his gaze confidently, as he tried to suppress the renewed running of this afternoon’s carnage in his mind: every stab, every crack that he had inflicted, and would have inflicted.

This afternoon had proved he could not trust himself around anyone he held close, not even to live in Starling House with his family.

“I’m fine,” he lied, at last.

The man’s face assumed its usual skeptic reaction to Oliver’s attempts at external calmness. “As you say, your grace,” he intoned.

Oliver flattened his mouth. “I’m going riding. Inform Sara not to wait for me at dinner if I’m not back by sundown.” He reached for the relevant breeches and accouterments, musing on the thought that he harboured danger itself.

Diggle was probably the only person he could have around him now who could defend himself adequately from the wild beast that lurked beneath him.

“I am fine,” he said again, and left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: currently in an assessed internship so I will not be able to update as often as I usually did. Will get round to writing in my spare time (ha!) and try for one chapter every two weeks.
> 
> This chapter is low on historical references save for the fact that Canary Court was based on Chavenage House because I thought I want it to look like Trenwith in Poldark, and Laurel's reaction was inspired by Claire's after she got attacked by the soldiers in Outlander (she runs to the stones after). The backstory for Canary Court is that some poor person was bankrupted by an unscrupulous climbing family like the Warleggans and the house was mortgaged to the hilt, making it easy for Sara to acquire with her capital - loaned by two persons. One of them was Nyssa Raatko, who is an archer as well, true to the strong tradition of archery in the Ottoman Empire. I love that England also has a strong archery tradition (albeit with a longbow instead of the bow you see Oliver wield in the show, which is more characteristic in the Ottoman Empire). I would love to see if you can guess who the other one is! Kudos to anyone who thought that her head gardener was Poison Ivy, whom I know is usually more femme fatale in portrayal but I didn't want her to like Oliver. Oliver can't take care of ferns!
> 
> I rewrote this chapter several times before I got here, sometimes having Laurel's perspective and sometimes with Tommy's. The original chapter title was Beast but I saved some parts for subsequent chapters in the end to focus on Sara's relationship with Oliver. I know my readers who ship Olicity will have alarm bells ringing at this chapter. Please don't be alarmed - Olicity is still the relationship I'm working towards and I promise that for every Lauriver or Ollara scene there will be an Olicity one that shows how Felicity is the love of his life when you juxtapose it. Or how Tommy is the love of Laurel's life, etc. I intended to respect the fact that he did have a relationship with Sara and do homage to it in the context of the chapter, and I hope you think I understood it correctly when I say that Laurel was the dream, Sara comfort, and I'll leave you to see how he describes Felicity! This chapter also took forever because I got distracted by trying to write out the Birds of Prey nursery rhyme and that will be up with a subsequent chapter once I can get it recorded to supplement your reading, my misgivings about the quality of my nursery rhyme-writing aside.


	16. Siege

For all she said about needing to rest as she banished Tommy and her sister from her company, Laurel had little chance of sleep coming to her as she lay in bed. Fatigue from the strain of her travels coalesced in each limb and sinew, but a relentless urge to immerse herself in an activity of some sort plagued her.

The alternative was to dwell upon the events of the day: how Sara and Ollie had betrayed her, in more ways than the kiss they had shared in public at Starling House five years ago, or how she had been attacked and nearly raped in a Bristol slum, following which Oliver slaughtered five men before her eyes in an unholy mania of brutality.

She sat up, and threw her bed covers aside to go to the window, where twilight’s pink rays permeated the thick material of the curtains in pinpricks. Pulling the blinds open, she peered out, and a pair of dark eyes staring out of a grubby face met hers.

She stepped back in surprise. Her room was on the second floor, but the child – for she could see from the dim outline of gangly limbs in the shadowed foliage that it was a child – was perched upon a branch that stretched past where her room was located.

“How do you do?” said Laurel.

The child did not respond, her eyes unblinking.

She tried again. “Would you like to come inside? It’s warmer and we can get something to eat from the kitchen downstairs.”

The child’s face did not alter from its dispassionate visage, but she raised what looked like a bun towards Laurel.

“Is this food?”

A nod. The bun remain stretched out in an offer.

“For me?”

Another nod. Laurel took the roll into her fingers and bit into it hesitantly, her tongue testing the flaky layers of the pastry and finding it dry and rather bland, as if the roll had been baked without any butter or eggs whatsoever. Embedded in the roll was a piece of sweetmeat, which she curiously swallowed under the child’s watchful gaze.

The child’s expression approached interest’s stoic end and the edges of her mouth lifted briefly when she saw Laurel swallow the last of the morsel.

Laurel licked her lips to remove any stray crumbs and then extended a hand to the child. “Will you come in now?”

Instead of accepting the invitation in kind, the child cocked her head in the direction of Laurel’s door. Heavy footsteps were heard passing her room, and when Laurel whipped her head back to the window, the child was gone, the sole vestige of their conversation’s existence a retreating shadow and the residual dryness at the back of Laurel’s mouth.

She went to inspect the source of the footsteps, in time to see Oliver’s valet enter a room that presumably belonged to the duke. The man paused for a long moment at the door before he entered fully, which was most peculiar indeed. Laurel leaned out of her own room to have a better look at what had surprised him so, grateful that she could focus on something else than the travails of her own mind.

From where she stood there was little that she could see of Oliver’s room, but fate rewarded her curiousity swiftly. Out came Sara, cheeks tear-stained and eyes red as she stopped just outside Oliver’s door, which swung shut behind her. Sara took a deep breath and turned to the corridor, where Laurel’s half-leaning form could clearly be seen by all.

Sara’s eyes widened. Laurel turned and slammed her door shut, picking at the laces on the back of the nightgown Sara had lent her upon reaching Canary Court at the same time.

 _She had to go_ , she thought. That had been the first thing that struck her mind when she first saw Oliver and Sara together at midday and the events of the afternoon had not changed that in the slightest. There was no use staying here, not when Sara was obviously alive and well and recalcitrant about her absence.

Her door was flung open and in came Sara, uttering a barrage of words that Laurel did not register in the slightest. Laurel stepped behind the changing screen and pulled on the travelling gown she had worn, her fingers fumbling at the laces on the back.

“Laurel, you have to listen to me,” Sara said, sounding as if she stood just before the screen. “It’s not what it looks like at all. None of it is. Please, let me explain.”

Her lacing was a mess, but Laurel cared only that her gown was securely fastened and she strode to the vanity table, where her bonnet and gloves were laid out neatly. “I don’t think you have anything to explain to me, Mrs Raatko,” she put out, pulling on a glove and doing up its buttons quickly. “Your hospitality was much appreciated; you may receive in kind should you ever call on the Lances in London.”

As Sara reached forward to curl an anxious hand around Laurel’s to restrain her movements, or perhaps to call her full attention to her, there was a low thudding sound heard from the ground.

Both women glanced down at the source: Sara had inadvertently stepped on the parcel Laurel had assiduously kept by her side ever since she left London, which was presently lying on the ground where Tommy had left it the last he was in this room.

Its corners had been slightly crushed and paper torn when Tommy’s curricle overturned that afternoon, and the application of Sara’s weight to it meant that some of its contents began spilling across the floorboards now in a kaleidoscopic testimony of Laurel’s own foolishness.

She had commissioned the parcel’s contents specially, holding off on her departure by two days just to ensure that her gift to Sara was ready to be presented immediately upon their heavily anticipated reconciliation. This was envisioned to be a present of hope and joy, containing a collection of paints and a sable paintbrush Laurel had picked out for the last birthday Sara would have celebrated in Lance House. As Sara lifted her foot off the box they could both see that the floorboards were now the recipient of Laurel’s thoughtfulness, for two of the pig bladders holding the paint had burst open, and a riot of cerulean blue and an orange that approximated the shade of the sky at twilight were trickling forth in rivulets around Sara’s skirts.

“You have every right to hate me, Laurel,” she said, her subdued manner evidence that she recognised that the parcel was to be a present for her. “But please, for my sake, let me answer the questions you have. You must have questions.”

Laurel’s temper flared, and at that moment she hated her sister for the all hurt and shock that had been weighing down her heart like a stone she carried from central Bristol to Canary Court.

“For your sake?” Laurel repeated, her tone loaded with scorn. Sara winced and opened her mouth to correct herself, but Laurel cut her off with her next words. “But of course. Never say that I have been remiss in my duties when a sisterly opportunity is presented to me.” She shook off the hand that Sara had placed on her wrist, pulling on the other glove slowly and punctuating her next sentence with the rhythm of her buttoning.

“Questions, you say. How well you know me, despite all the time that has passed. I do have questions – let’s approach them systematically, shall we?” Laurel raised a hand up to count the categories that her questions could fall neatly into. “Say we start with 'who'. Who is Mrs Raatko, Sara? Is there a Mr Raatko?”

Sara’s voice was shaky and tentative, and her expression was pained as she said, “No, there isn’t. I – I took the name when I settled in Bristol as the proprietor of ‘The Canary’s Posies’ and owner of this land. I’m also known as the Canary in some circles, if you want to know.”

“I _want_ to know everything, my dear sister. Now where were we? Oh yes, 'what', of course. What is Canary Court? You have women and women of differing backgrounds running this manor, but with no clear hierarchy of servants.”

“Laurel, please don't do this,” Sara said, eyes closed. “This isn’t you.”

“Oh do pardon me,” Laurel replied sarcastically, drawing her hand to her chest. “And here I thought you wanted me to ask you questions.”

“I do,” her sister said, screwing her face up the way she had always did when she tried to hold back tears. “I need you to understand. This place is a refuge for women like me, who can no longer live in the worlds they inhabit. I set it up with some money that Aunt Barbara and Nyssa gave me, and I’ve been providing care to any woman who comes on our aunt’s direction.”

Laurel was taken aback. Her aunt knew about Sara, and once never sought to tell the Lances? “How long have you been in Bristol?” she demanded. “How long have our aunt and Oliver known?”

Sara looked away, much as if she had no desire to reply. “…three years,” she finally said in a small voice. “Oliver’s known for two years. Aunt Barbara from the beginning. I implored them not to tell any of you when I first decided to return from Istanbul - that is, Constantinople.”

 _Three years_. For the past three years Laurel had watched her mother lose her sanity, her father lose his joy, her name become synonymous with mud in the _ton_ , and all this while her sister had been happily playing saviour to the battered women of England, able to catch the first stagecoach to London on a moment's notice.

“Well,” she uttered, breaking the tensed silence that had settled over the room with the end of Sara’s last words. “I’m glad to see that at least one person in the Lance family has been well. Now if you will excuse me, I believe I have to return to London to quell any rumours that I am avoiding the Duke of Starling for old times’ sake.” Laurel secured her bonnet and made to leave.

“I had to do it, Laurel,” cried her sister. “I had to go when I did. I saw your entire coming out, and I knew, from the depth of my guts, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do the whole rigmarole where chit after chit was dragged out onto the marriage mart to be judged and sold like cattle. And to be the Incomparable’s sister – eternally found wanting, always whispered about condescendingly as ‘a wild thing’, a ‘spirited girl who needed the girdle of a husband’s discipline’!”

Tears ran down Sara’s cheeks now, large ones that she did not bother to wipe away as she continued, “I saw Nyssa Raatko at the Derby in 1806, so full of confidence, mistress of her own fortunes and favours. It was as if all the want that had been welling up in my heart suddenly had a purpose, a goal – I wanted to be like her, to be with her if that would be what it takes to be free.

“And so I left in 1807, although I wish I could have changed how I did somewhat. But now…I’m happy, Laurel. I’m free, tied down only where my heart takes me, able to survive and more importantly, live.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me for what I’ve done. I only want you to understand that I could not have done it five years ago. I could not come out, knowing that I was all alone and doomed to fail as a debutante and then as a society matron, for being less than you in every aspect the _ton_ values.”

Laurel bit the inside of her cheek, shaking her head slightly, even as Sara’s dejected gaze was focused on the broken parcel at her feet. Opening the door to her room, Laurel turned back to address her sister one last time.

“Five years ago, Sara, you wouldn’t have been alone. I would have been there with you, married to Ollie or not.” She began walking down the corridor in search of Tommy, wanting to return to London, to some sense of normalcy.

At that moment a high-pitched cry reverberated through the house, a sound most unnatural in its frequency, followed by the rumble of footsteps and alarmed voices.

Sara rushed out, her despair momentarily placed aside as she began knocking on the doors and calling for the inhabitants of Canary Court to gather downstairs. Laurel did not fully understand her sister’s instructions or the situation, but she suspected that the sound she had heard was an alarm of sorts.

They gathered in wait in the dining room, all present save for Canary Court’s mistress, who entered bearing an assortment of weapons. Sara began lying them down on the dining table, issuing imperatives as she did so.

“The watchtower signals that there are five men approaching the rear and another ten from the front,” Sara barked out, leaning over to hand a crossbow to Helena Bertinelli. “With Nyssa and Frances gone from our ranks we will need to alter our response positions.”

Laurel saw that she had changed her frock, and was presently garbed entirely in black. As Sara straightened, Laurel noted with surprise that her sister was wearing trousers.

“Pam, take the east as usual. Mr Diggle, I would appreciate it if you could help with the west flank.”

Oliver’s valet cum bodyguard nodded, arms folded across his barreled chest, which displayed his immense strength in an understated way.

“You’ll need an archer at the watchtower,” came Oliver’s voice. The Duke of Starling was seated at the table, his expression grave. “I’ll take Nyssa’s place if you have a bow ready.”

Sara raked a glance at him upon hearing his words. “I don’t have a longbow, Ollie.”

“I never said I couldn’t shoot with a recurve bow.”

There was no witty reply for him as Sara turned to the remaining member in her defense plan. “Helena, I need you to take everyone else to the catacombs and defend them if need be.”

“I do not accept,” replied the woman who had been Oliver’s mistress since his return. “Let me take the west flank and his grace’s man can babysit.”

“I want to be in the fight,” a new voice joined the conversation from Laurel’s side, in an accent that she had never heard before. Despite their certain nature, the words were also uttered in unsteady tones, as if their speaker was unsure of her speech.

The child that Laurel had spoken to through her window had likely slipped in with no one noticing, and now stood by her side, garbed in a black tunic and trousers that resembled Sara’s own clothes. “My father,” she added, and Laurel saw that the child mouthed the first syllable of each word for a second before pronouncing the sound in her throat.

Sara scowled. “Cassandra, you may not duel with your father – I am under very specific instructions regarding your stay. If Cain has come, I will handle him personally. Go with Helena and keep our guests safe.”

“Is it possible that Mr Wilson is looking for me?” asked the blonde woman that had been introduced to Laurel just yesterday as Donna Smoak.

“Cain is acquainted with him, and that’s why you and Ollie must not show your faces, no matter what.” Sara picked up a spear the likes of which Laurel had only ever seen on display in houses belonging to the slightly more eccentric members of the _ton_. “Everyone to their positions now.”

 

There was no smell, for a place where bodies had reportedly been buried.

As Laurel followed the party ordered to the catacombs, she could sense a smug sort of contempt radiating from Oliver’s former paramour. It was as if the woman, having known something of her past, now judged her based on that estimation and found her wanting. Helena Bertinelli kept turning back to look at the way Laurel navigated through the narrow tunnel accessed through a false board in the library.

Tommy, who had never liked orders, did not take to being forced to trudge down a dubious cave tunnel in little to no light. “What the devil is going on?” he snapped, barely holding back another string of curses as Laurel saw him step into a rock that had jutted out of the wall along their path.

“Surely you heard earlier,” replied their guide primly, pausing at a juncture with two separate routes. “Canary Court is under siege.”

“That is not an explanation in the slightest,” Tommy protested. “Who are the assailants? Where is Oliver? Why are we walking down this – ow! – this confounded tunnel?”

Helena let out a bark of laughter that echoed off the red sandstone walls as it travelled down their line of five. “Believe me, your lordship, if it were my decision to make, I would have elected to let you die in your bed this evening instead of listening to you whine about my magnanimity now.”

Laurel placed what she hoped was a calming hand on Tommy’s shoulder. Her mind was on the last conversation she had with her sister, and she paid little attention to her surroundings even as she stood waiting to enter the tiny space they had all passed through before her. This appeared to be their intended destination, for Helena had ceased her progress forward, and was waiting for everyone to join her. The cavern they had entered was airy and likely had a higher ceiling than the cramped conditions of the previous tunnel. As Laurel cupped a hand around the flicker of her sole candle to protect the flame, the sudden rush of air circulating the cavern was cool to her cheek.

She heard Helena stride forward and dimly made out how she set down her candle by a large, disk-shaped object set on the ground. There was some dithering while the woman regarded it, before Helena Bertinelli bent forward and tugged the object forward.

The chamber they were in became alight, as rays reflected off the surface of the mirror Helena had pulled onto another, and another. Laurel saw now that they were standing in a ravine topped by two facades of stone that clamoured toward its counterpart, allowing only a sliver of natural light to fall into the cavernous below. There were two other tunnels apart from the one they had used that led to the same space, equally narrow in width, and a line of stairs cut into the stone of the walls that lead to another passage.

These caves were likely manmade, given the deliberate nature of the design. On a whim, Laurel thrust her candle back into the darkness of the path she had exited. The angle at which the tunnel met the ravine was such that any light borne by an approaching visitor there would be immediately visible to the ravine’s inhabitants, an excellent security feature.

“Are there…dead people here?” asked the woman that had been introduced to Laurel as Donna Smoak just yesterday timidly.

“We call these caves the catacombs, but we haven’t quite gotten around to burying dead bodies here, though not for the lack of trying,” Helena explained as she snuffed out her candle and laid her crossbow down. The child Sara had called Cassandra disappeared up the flight of stone stairs, without even a candle to light her way.

“What’s up there?” Laurel asked.

“I’m told that this whole complex of caves was designed to house the inhabitants of Canary Court, should it fall to enemy hands. I’ve never explored it myself, unlike the brat, but there should be other rooms where food may be stored.” She yawned. “In any case, the Canary told us to come here, so here we must stay until the Canary Cry is sounded again.”

Tommy approached Helena. “My dear Miss Bertinelli,” he said, with a forced pleasant tone. “You can’t expect us to sit tight and wait with no understanding of our present circumstances.”

Helena looked merely amused at his posturing. “My lord, if the Canary has not answered you, or the Duke of Starling, for that matter, what makes you think I will risk being stabbed by a pike or an arrow by telling you anything at all?” She sat herself down on a nearby stone ledge, stretching her willowy frame across its length languorously and closing her eyes. “Go back and ask them who the Birds of Prey are. Ask your precious friends why they haven’t bothered to inform you of their secrets.”

“Birds of Prey?” repeated Tommy.

“Like the nursery rhyme?” asked Donna.

Helena shook her head. “I’m not singing it, just so you know. My voice is reserved for a very select repertoire of works.”

Laurel felt inclined to follow the child into the caves. This whole situation was irregular, the company questionable, and she needed some privacy to think about what Sara had just told her without having to engage in polite conversation with two strangers of dubious background.

“I’m going for a walk,” she announced. “How do I find my way back here?”

Helena Bertinelli reached into her pocket and tossed something at Laurel. It was a spool of thick, red thread, as Laurel discovered upon catching it in her free hand.

“Have fun looking for your minotaur,” quipped the woman. “It’ll be dark in there, but don’t panic and forget to unspool the cords, unless you want to give the catacombs true meaning to its name.”

“Laurel, I don't think this is a good idea,” Tommy interjected, but Laurel had already found the end of the thread and began climbing the stone steps.

“Will there be torches on the walls?” Laurel asked Helena, turning her thread over in her hands. “How do I see if it’s dark inside, like you said?”

The woman smiled. “You can carry your little candle to each surface in vain and let your fear of the dark guide you, Miss Lance, or you can walk confidently accepting that the darkness is part of the experience.”

“Do you propose I cast about blindly when the lighting changes, Miss Bertinelli? Surely there are chambers like this where light permeates the complex.”

“Once you let the darkness inside, it never comes out,” replied Helena in a sing-song tone, and Laurel had the feeling that they were never really talking about her navigation of the catacombs at all.

She stepped forward into the darkness, with only the little candle and a spool of thread to guide her way.

* * *

Tommy found Laurel by following the trail of thread she left. Her progress had been quick, and the time he took to mutter a hasty apology to the other women for leaving their company so unceremoniously only served to put distance between them.

The deeper he travelled into the caves, the colder the chill in the air. He came to a small chamber, evidently designed to be a single person’s room, where Laurel was seated on a stone ledge by herself, the remains of her thread in her hands and her candle snuffed out.

He slid onto the ledge next to her.

“Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve found the minotaur.”

Tommy could not see her clearly, but he heard the despondency in her tone, and reached for her. He curled his ungloved fingers around hers, and with the other hand, pressed an object he was accustomed to carrying on his person into her hands.

“I lost your soldier, Tommy.”

“I know,” he nodded. She held the toy horse his mother had gifted him; he could feel her turning it about in her fingers.

“It was part of a matching set, the little cavalry man to this toy horse – the last gift from your mother.”

“Yes,” he said cordially, his thumb stroking hers gently in comfort.

 “I lost it. I took it one day to spite you for putting a fish in my bed, and then I lost it without my knowing. How could you have forgiven me at all?” Her voice was cracking, and he did not need the flicker of a flame to know that she was crying. “I took away the most important thing you owned, never mind whether I meant to at all. How do you forgive me?”

 _Because I love you_ , he thought, but Laurel had enough problems without having to deal with him now. “The soldier is not my mother, Laurel,” he said softly. “But you are you, and I would never choose a mere object – one that I have no hope of getting back anyway – over you and our friendship.”

Her fingers tightened over the toy, and he heard her sob audibly for a couple of moments. Tommy continued holding her hand in silence, waiting as she took several deep breaths to calm herself.

“I quarrelled with my sister. Said terrible things, but what else is new for Laurel?” Her shoulders shuddered just as her voice quavered. “She took my life from me when she left, Tommy. I stopped being the _ton_ ’s darling, the Incomparable, which was all I had always known and all through these years I – I kept telling myself that I was not angry, that this was just life’s hand for a woman and that I was a woman like any other… I kept saying I wasn’t angry about my mother, about my father, even though a part of me knew that I was taking it out on Oliver the moment he came back. And I thought I could overlook all of that just so I could have my sister back. I did want to overlook that so I could have Sara back, so my mother and father could have Sara back.

“But when I saw her for the first time, all I felt was angry. And jealous, because I saw a woman who’s beautiful, who’s alive. And I’m not any of those things anymore…I…”

Laurel gave in to louder sobs, and Tommy pulled her into his arms, letting her clutch at his coat as she cried.

“…what sort of terrible person behaves that way when reunited with her long-lost sister? That, instead of feeling so, so grateful that she is alive and well, feels hatred because she dared to be alive and well while everything was falling apart at home?”

“Laurel,” Tommy began, but she cut him off.

“And she’s been doing so much good ever since she left, Tommy. This whole place – the shop, the house, even this cave – they are tools for women to be saved. For women who need an escape. She didn’t have to do it, after she escaped herself. But she did. All this time I’ve been burying my emotions by selfishly trying to focus on the plight of others to remind myself how much worse my life could be, and she’s been giving, giving and giving… I am the minotaur, Tommy, a beast that cannot look beyond how ugly it is, even to rescue itself from the depths of its despair. I’m the minotaur.”

Laurel finally broke off, breathing heavily. Tommy considered his next words very carefully before he spoke.

“We’re not perfect, Laurel. You try very hard to be, and you come close to it very often. There is no daughter in the _ton_ more filial than you, and I’ve no doubt that there would be no society matron more successful than you had you married any time thus far. But you are a doer – a Martha, as it were, while Sara was always Mary.”

“The favoured one,” Laurel said.

“No, the sister who was focused on her inner life while the other got things in running order. You’ve held everything together all these years – the tatters of your family’s reputation, your mother’s health, the building of the orphanage, your father’s drinking. You made sure that the world could run, and all along you never let yourself mourn, or grieve, or complain.” He turned to face her, despite being only able to see the gleam of her tear-filled eyes. “It’s natural to feel some resentment for having to clean up after another person’s aftermath, for having to be weighed down by all of that with no opportunity to air any of your feelings about it. But the real test of character is what you chose to do having acknowledged your negative feelings. I have every confidence in Miss Laurel Lance triumphing over it all, after she’s had the good cry she’s neglected over the past five years. I see her becoming more beautiful and more alive as a result of it. What do you say?”

He could not even make out the outline of her head clearly, but he could swear that she was smiling at him. “…I say that Miss Laurel Lance could not have won without Lord Thomas Merlyn to point the way to her when she was lost.” He sensed her shifting slightly, and then felt her hand on his jaw, the ring that he had loaned her cool against his skin. He stopped breathing entirely as she leaned in to peck his cheek, a stray curl of her hair brushing against his forehead as she did so.

“Thank you,” he heard her say quietly, as she rose from the ledge. “We should probably go – I think I hear the high-pitched sound they call the Canary Cry very faintly.”

Tommy was glad for the darkness as he choked out his acquiescence to her plans and followed behind her, heart thudding hard against his chest.

* * *

Oliver returned to Canary Court with only one arrow left, the watchtower keeper with him to receive further instructions from her Canary. Sara’s hair was undone from her previous exertion, hanging loose down her back as she received a report from Diggle and from Pamela about their defense efforts.

“Ollie,” she said as he entered the dining room, pushing her hair behind her ear to see better.

“Miss Sullivan is here too,” Oliver replied, turning his body slightly to afford Sara a better view of the petite woman with him. “One of the men was wearing this mask.” The mask he had torn off the face of one of the fallen men was a hood that obscured all of its wearer’s features, a garment made by joining two clothes shaded black and orange respectively together.

“A follower of Deathstroke,” said Sara, echoing Oliver’s thoughts precisely, that Slade Wilson was involved in the abortive attack on Canary Court.

“Yes. Does he suspect that Donna is here?”

“I apprehended David Cain, who wanted his daughter and also bore a message. Slade says he’s lost his pet bird, and wants to warn me and the other Birds off taking her in. Cain left without a fight – which means that Slade is not upset about the possibility of Donna being here in the slightest, and required Cain to only deliver his words without sparking off a full-blown conflict.” Sara turned to address Pamela. “See to your wounds, Pam. We need to increase our supplies in the catacombs in case this happens again, and I will write to Caitlin and my aunt about procuring Donna’s passage to the Continent immediately.”

Pamela left, and Sara picked her pike up from the ground, now bloodied. “Thank you, gentlemen, for your help. I understand that you mean to leave tomorrow, and so I say my farewells now. Not to be inhospitable, but I have urgent duties to fulfill presently – a friend’s life may be a stake. Chloe, I need you to fill in the details of today’s attack in our record book, and let Helena and our other guests back in through the library door.”

Miss Sullivan nodded and both women made to leave. Oliver shot out a hand to grab Sara’s arm, his confusion at the details of her revelations underscored by the niggling suspicion that a certain bespectacled blonde crucial to his interests was in peril.

“Pet bird? What does that mean?”

Sara blinked with surprise. “Don’t you know? Felicity Smoak is a Bird of Prey. And she’s vanished without a trace.” She continued to say something along the lines of Slade being livid with rage, but Oliver heard nothing with the rush of blood to his head, his plans to find the missing woman forming as he stood still by the dining table.

He could not solve his father’s murder without Felicity, and he was not going to lose her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter reads like a series of vignettes, probably because of how much content I had to cover, or because I wrote it in dribs and drabs over a week instead of finishing it all in two days like I usually do. It's heavy on DC references - Aunt Barbara was always Oracle, but it's unclear right now if I need to go to Bath and whether Nightwing will make an appearance if so. This is Arrow, after all, and much as it has been fun to go all Birds of Prey I rather think it's time to return to the main Arrow cast, though Cassandra Cain makes her debut here despite being in the Batfamily. She's Eurasian, and the bun she gives Laurel was intended to mimic my experience eating one of those Chinese pastries my mother likes so much. I thought to include Chloe Sullivan, as a shout-out to Smallville fans. Frances is Harley Quinn; I used her middle name because Harleen wasn't a likely name for the time.
> 
> Sara's account of meeting Nyssa in the Derby is a shout-out to Eloisa James' Essex Sisters series, specifically Pleasure For Pleasure. Laurel's confrontation with her was a conversation I always thought the show should have had, though I realise I have set up a very difficult reconciliation scene to write given that I've already adapted the one from the show for Laurel's confession to Tommy instead. I'll take it as a challenge :)
> 
> The catacombs were based on the manmade caverns in Redcliffe, Bristol. I think the name came about because I read a certain lovely comment while I was planning this chapter and it sort of slipped out. The part on the angles which the tunnels led to the ravine was based on a square I saw in the Albayzin in Granada - the neighbourhood was designed to withstand attack, and I wanted to bring in some of that for these caves.
> 
> Laurel's confession was always intended to be part of the previous chapter, but it didn't quite fit into the timeline even though thematically it was precisely the same kind of pity party Oliver and Sara are so good at. Tommy's reference to Martha and Mary is an allusion to Luke 10:38-42, though with no extended meaning about salvation by faith and so Tommy does not mean to put Laurel down at all. I've always maintained that Laurel is capable of cruelty when she speaks because of her need to protect her vulnerability, and I enjoyed writing her dialogue immensely in this chapter, whether she was lashing out at her sister or allowing herself to be vulnerable to Tommy. Laurel's hesitation to speak to Donna and Helena is not meant to mark her as a horrible person - we must remember that she's a lady, and both Donna and Helena would be considered fallen women. I think it's entirely natural for Laurel to internalise some of the pronounced discriminatory views of her time, especially when she's always been characterised as someone who cares deeply about her position and social standing from childhood. Not to mention that she always comes off as cold when you first meet her because she's trying to ascertain how you relate to her. Laurel has knee-jerk reactions that we may not agree with but I think she is more than capable of exceeding these when she thinks about them. I hope Merlance fans love how that scene ended.
> 
> The next chapters will give more airtime to the other pairings, as Oliver and Diggle return to London and look for Felicity. I know all the Olicity fans have been waiting patiently, but is there anything else you readers really want to see?


	17. Disappointment

Her guests had left the first thing in the morning.

Not together, of course. Upon seeing Oliver the previous evening, Tommy had thrown a punch directed at his eye, coupled with the harsh invective of "You bastard!" True to character Oliver had just stood there and allowed himself to be hit, followed with a "I deserved that entirely" expressed through his mournful blue eyes.

Sara rather thought Laurel had no kind words for Oliver either, for her sister had stood impassively by during the melee, not once coming to her former fiancé's defence in respect of his deception about Sara's whereabouts.

She moistened her lips. Oliver had been a more than loyal friend, never once holding her past misfeasance against her when acceding to her request that he keep her secret. As she entered her tenant's cottage, bearing gifts and a warning about the possibility of intruders coming onto her land and disturbing their peace, she acknowledged once again that she had treated him most unfairly that night of her disappearance.

Details of her hastily improvised plan came to her mind: the decision to assume the guise of having been ruined by a random stranger at her sister's ball, when all eyes would be on the lovely bride-to-be, was foiled entirely when a ridiculously foxed Lord Oliver Queene stumbled to her side and then pulled her into a kiss, evidently not recognising her behind her black domino mask.

She had planned it such that her sister's impending wedding would remove the  _ton_ 's censure from the Lance family. Instead she became in danger of causing a scene she did not want in the centre of the Starling ballroom. So she had dragged him into the hack where Nyssa was waiting outside, and the plan had to go on, albeit with her sister's fiancé as the unsuspecting victim rather than a hapless young buck who had been invited to the ball.

The result was her freedom; the cost a wake of destruction in the lives of the Lances and the Queenes.

Sara exhaled. She had never expected the consequences of her choices then, but concentrating on what could have been and feeling most wretched for its sake was not a productive course of action when one had tasks to complete.

Her letter to Caitlin would have been en route to Lincolnshire by now, she mused. Felicity had asked for a corpse resembling her mother to be found along the roads from Cambridge to throw off Deathstroke's searches, and who better to supply that than the one woman who controlled all of the resurrection trade in England?

Uttering her last greetings to old Mrs Resik, she left the basket of food that she had packed on the woman's table and stepped out of the stone cottage. To her surprise, a curricle was parked next to her horse, its reins in her sister's gloved hands.

"Sara," said Laurel. "Would you permit me to accompany you back to Canary Court? Tommy says he'll take your horse back for you so you can ride with me."

Tommy was standing next to her mare, his expression as genial as it generally was, and thus wholly inadequate as a clue to the purpose of the visit.

Sara nodded slowly, unsure of what to make of her sister's sudden appearance. They had not parted on good terms the day before, their last conversation being the confrontation in Laurel's room after Sara was spotted coming out of Oliver's.

A part of Sara recalled that Tommy had always been utterly devoted to her sister and that one could hardly count on Laurel's most devoted acolyte to come to her rescue should her sister decide to commit murder.

As per their agreement, Tommy mounted Sara's horse and rode swiftly off in the direction of her house. Sara climbed onto the plush seat of the vehicle cautiously, setting her empty hands in her lap as the curricle roared to action under Laurel's direction.

"I never thought of you as the type to visit her tenants," Laurel remarked, her green gaze firmly on the road ahead.

Sara studied her sister for a spell before replying. "I never thought of myself as ever owning an estate, much less having tenants. But not everyone takes to living under my rules about guests in Canary Court, and with no regard for the existing social divisions of our world such that maid and lady alike sit at the same table for dinner."

Laurel chuckled. "Always the free spirit, aren't you?"

"The wild thing," Sara agreed, a warmth beginning to form in the depths of her heart. "Except now I have to curb that somewhat so my estate manager doesn't develop apoplexy when talking to me."

"I'm sorry about what I said yesterday," Laurel said abruptly, halting the curricle's progress and looking into her sister's eyes. "I was…deliberately cruel and harsh…and I dearly regret hurting you with my words."

There were some types of joy that did not immediately produce a smile upon one's lips when experienced. These joys were in their inchoate form mere whispers of hope that latched upon the heart in one's more unguarded moments, but when they ripened, they came as a precipitous burst that strained at the corners of one's person and threatened to surpass one's sense of self-possession altogether. Sara barely heard her sister's next words as the fruition of her wildest dreams overwhelmed her, and a cathartic gleam of tears came to her eyes, her accompanying exclamation of emotion both a laugh and a cry.

"…I have been most negligent as a sister, failing to notice how you felt about your impending debut, and you've every right to feel disappointment in how …" Laurel was in the midst of saying, when Sara threw her arms around her.

"Oh Laurel," Sara whispered in wonderment. "Oh my sister..."

She felt the slackening of her sister's shoulders, a slight shudder of relief, and the slow slide of arms around her body meant to fold her into a warm embrace.

"You are still a most terrible listener," grumbled Laurel into her sister's hair, and Sara felt her mouth widen into a large grin, even as the midday sun's blinding glister illuminated the world before her.

* * *

"You've become rather fixated on the chit, Oliver," remarked Anatoli as he sat on the bench directly behind where Oliver and Diggle had been waiting.

They were in a deserted corner in the west of Hyde Park, the rendezvous point selected by Oliver for its relative anonymity and fresh air. In the far distance, deer and cattle grazed under the foliage in this manmade mimicry of nature, the Serpentine itself the ideal watering hole for the dandy and bird of paradise alike to show their plumage off in a more fashionable hour.

Anatoli sounded jovial as he said, "It's quite unlike the dashing rake you are to seek a woman out so desperately."

"She's not just any woman," Oliver replied immediately, before biting his tongue at how his sentiment had been voiced.

With all places for passage via mail coach fully booked, they had taken the first available stage coach back to London, whereupon Oliver had demanded to see the Russian immediately upon their arrival that very Friday evening. Roy's associate had already informed him of what she knew before this meeting, and he needed Anatoli's input before deciding how to act.

Collecting his thoughts, Oliver tried again. "You knew that Felicity Smoak is a Bird of Prey."

Anatoli laughed. "How does the song go again? Ah yes - ' _I've heard of a land, where sorrows end, from the mouth at Delphi'_ ," he sang with much flourish. There was an awkward pause as it became obvious that Oliver and Diggle alike did not share his ardour for a full-blown rendition of the nursery rhyme, and he continued.

"No, Oliver, I only suspected it, when Deathstroke released the information that Felix Sherwood has always been a woman, but his recent currents of rage in the underworld only confirms my impression. I wonder what the other Birds will do, now that one of their own has had her identity compromised."

"What have you heard of her disappearance?"

"She was last seen at Deathstroke's house party on Tuesday. There was talk of her writing a new code that very evening, Deathstroke himself announcing a couple of dates for bids to be given to his more valued customers." Anatoli raised a piece of paper, which Oliver took from his hand and opened. Slade had written an unaddressed letter advertising a weapon called 'Kingmaker'. As Oliver and Diggle read the contents of the letter, Anatoli hummed the next line in the song.

"What happened next?"

"Following those letters being sent out, there was a fire in the attic near dawn. Quite a large blaze, actually – the smoke was seen from miles away. Deathstroke and his guests had to evacuate, but Miss Smoak was nowhere to be seen. There has been no body found, not one that Slade Wilson identifies as his captured Bird of Prey, anyway. He's sent a missive to the underworld offering a reward for information on her, or the delivery of Miss Smoak – alive and unharmed – to him."

At that Anatoli began chuckling. "It's ' _smoke without fire_ ' in the song and Miss Smoak has started a flame all the same!"

Oliver ignored the man's jest and the accompanying irritation he felt at the ill-placed humour, crushing the letter in his hand and placing it into his coat pocket. Anatoli's information was consistent with what Sin had said, which meant Felicity's safety was worryingly uncertain indeed. "You don't suppose she's at Number 24 Bond Street?"

Anatoli grew serious. "No, unlikely. Slade has people watching the house. Miss Smoak is going to need a new identity or a more powerful protector than the Oracle, assuming she's even alive."

"She's alive," Oliver said.

"How do you know?"

In truth, he did not. He only had hope in respect of Felicity Smoak.

Oliver got up from the bench he had been sitting on, Diggle following suit. He adjusted his hat and motioned to his partner that it was time to leave.

"Does the Arrow intend to take her under his protection?" asked Anatoli, ever the information monger.

"The Arrow has yet to make a decision on the matter, and needs you to keep his interest a secret. But inform me immediately of any information pertaining to Miss Smoak's whereabouts and wellbeing. I would appreciate that you tell no one else about what you learn of her."

Anatoli made a sound of displeasure. "Have I ever told you, Oliver, that only paying customers have such rights when it comes to prime news like this?"

"The Duke of Starling will instruct his secretary to write to the Imperial Russian Ballet in St Petersburg, to extend an invitation for a private performance in Starling Manor at their earliest convenience."

Anatoli sprang to his feet and swivelled round, momentarily forgetting their guise of anonymity and that the Duke of Starling and himself were formally unacquainted. "Have I ever told you how much I appreciate having you as a brother, Oliver?" he cried, arms thrown heartily out to begin an embrace.

But he spoke to air, for the duke and his man had since left.

 

"You don't have a secretary," observed Diggle, as they dismounted from their steeds in the stables of Starling House. Roy's shadowy figure came into view, two horse blankets tucked under his arm.

Oliver shot him a look and turned to the lad. "Roy, I need you to redirect all eyes and ears on the whereabouts of Miss Felicity Smoak. Ask around for a woman of her description and make sure that you report to me immediately if you hear anything."

Without waiting for Roy to acknowledge his instructions, Oliver left in the direction of the house, beckoning for Diggle to come closer as he did so.

"I need you to do me a favour, John."

"I'm not fluent in Russian," said his valet. "I cannot write your letter."

"I meant for you to get a message to the War Office. See if you can persuade them to see her as an asset to be kept away from Slade Wilson's clutches." Oliver lifted the latch on the servants' door and opened it, heading confidently for the narrow flight of stairs typically obscured from the view and knowledge of non-servants as if peers of the realm entered their homes by the back door on a regular basis.

"Your grace, I'm not sure my words would carry weight, not without an explanation of some sort. What do I tell them?" Diggle asked, following Oliver up stealthily, his body pressed up against the wall as he avoided treading on the centre of the steps and so causing creaks.

Oliver turned to look him in the eye, thinking quickly. "Tell them that the man known as Deathstroke has been trying to get access to Felix Sherwood and has targeted the one woman who may know how to contact Sherwood. We must protect her, John."

They stepped into the duke's study, and Oliver poured out two glasses of brandy, tossing his own down his throat in a single gulp and handing the other to Diggle as he came to the sideboard where he stood. "Take the weekend off. I've kept you very busy for the past few days."

"I can't. Her grace will expect me to be present for your birthday party on Saturday."

"There's a birthday party?" Oliver was shocked, and he glanced back at his empty glass as he removed his hat and tossed it onto the large desk by his side.

"The invitations were sent by her grace and Lady Thea a while ago. Most of the  _ton_  has been invited."

Tearing off his cravat, he poured himself another drink before he replied. "Take the weekend off anyway. Leave my mother to me."

Diggle looked concerned, but he placed the untouched glass of brandy on the mantelpiece, nodding in acceptance of Oliver's generosity. "Try to get some sleep tonight then, despite the journey."

Oliver had begun thinking about how to break the news to his mother that he was moving out of Starling House, but Diggle's words got his attention. He quirked an eyebrow up in question as he asked, "Whatever are you talking about?"

It appeared Diggle wished to have the last word on the matter, for he turned from where he was standing at the door to address Oliver just before he left.

"You never sleep well after travelling in an enclosed space."

Oliver stared at the spot that Diggle had vacated for a moment, turning the rim of his glas over his hand. It was uncanny the degree to which the man knew him already, knew the parts of himself that he was anxious to hide from his family and friends ever since he returned to being a lordship.

He glanced down at his free hand. There the evidence of his iniquity was: his thumb was rubbing at his index finger, a manifestation of the discomfort he always had when he felt guilty. Ever since the carriage accident five years ago, any journey taken in a small, enclosed space produced in him an anxiety that would result in his usual tic.

That, and the vivid nightmares that inevitably followed.

He had not planned to sleep this night, for the fear that he would wake the household should he shout from his dreams. Sitting himself down behind his desk, he picked up the pile of unopened letters.

There was a scented note from Isabel, inviting him to join her at his nearest convenience 'to continue the conversation they had started in Mr Wilson's country house'. Following that was a letter of resignation from the accountant he had hired to take over the bulk of his managerial duties, citing the extensive number of questionable transactions in the records as proving too much for a man's conscience to bear.

Oliver scowled. So he had adjusted the numbers slightly when setting Verdant up so as not to call attention to the network of tunnels and secret chambers in the building, as well as to hide the fact that contrary to what was said, he was the only shareholder in the gaming hell. It was deuced inconvenient for the man to answer the call of his conscience, that exclusively middle-classed trapping.

There were only letters dated the fifteenth of May, which rather surprised him somewhat as he returned them to his desk's surface. He made a mental note to ask Diggle about the way mail was sorted, tossing back the contents of his glass as he did so.

Outlining the rooftops across the street was the soft glow of dawn, which was soon about to enter the study through his window. He ran a hand over his face. It was yet another sleepless night with nothing accomplished; no step closer to finding his father's murderer, and all the while his time was running out. The longer he remained among the  _ton_ , among his friends and family, the less plausible his tale of amnesia would seem and the more suspect his activities. As it was Laurel and Tommy had already knew that he was a liar and a dangerous killer. How long would it be before his father's murderer would discover his mission of vengeance, and choose to strike first from the safety of anonymity?

Snatching Isabel's letter off the pile of correspondence, he made for the corridor that led to the entrance hall. If he could not sleep nor work, perhaps there was something else he could do to temporarily obtain oblivion.

As he trudged down the stairs, Oliver realised that there was a pair of eyes watching him with displeasure in the shadows of the stairwell. He stopped short.

"Mother," he said, wondering if it would be best to press his lips to her cheek and pretend that he did not notice her ire before making a quick escape. "How early you up this morning."

The Duchess of Starling did not fall for his "Where have you been these past few days?" she demanded, her voice taut.

"Away," he blurted, casting in his mind for a cover story to follow his answer.

"Away," she repeated. "Of course. It's always 'away'. Or 'unavailable'. It matters not that your mother is hosting a family dinner, for the third time this Season. Or that you promised to bring Thea to the Ballards' soiree. You know, five years ago your irresponsibility was somewhat charming. It is a lot less so now."

"Mother, I went to a friend's house party."

"Oh, I know. A Mr Wilson from Cambridgeshire; a plan which you did not inform me of, and which I had to read your mail to confirm."

"You read my mail?"

"I was told last Sunday by Mr Diggle that you were going to Cambridgeshire. On Wednesday morning, news of a great fire at Mr Wilson's house reached London, and you did not send word." She stepped towards him, candlelight finally falling upon her face to illuminate her aggrieved expression. "So I looked through your letters, to confirm the worst. And when I found out that you were indeed at Mr Wilson's party, I thought – I thought that I had lost my beautiful boy again."

Her voice had shaken with the last word, and Oliver felt stabs of guilty racking his body, notwithstanding the outrage he felt at her having invaded his privacy.

"I'm sorry," he conceded, some part of him meaning it. "But you…you read my private correspondence – how could you even - "

"How could I?" asked Moira scornfully. "I make no apologies, when my son returns from the dead, but spends no time with his family, and lies – lies about his whereabouts to my face.

"The fire broke out on Wednesday. It's Saturday morning. How vapid do you think your mother is – that she cannot count the number of days you've failed to account for in your answer? Do you think that because I partake in activities like planning menus and hosting tea parties, that I am obtuse in the face of your evasions each time anyone asks you a question?"

"There are times, Oliver, when I wonder if you've really returned at all, for all the times you've been present, in person and in truth."

She stopped, pressing a hand to her temples and inhaling heavily. "I want you to start looking for a wife. Immediately."

"I beg your pardon?" Oliver choked out.

"You've been behaving as if you're a young buck of two and twenty, with no one to answer to or responsibilities to hold. Need I remind you that you are the duke? That there are no heirs, male of your body or not, to inherit?" Moira's tone remained imperative as she said, "A wife will be a calming influence. Or at least remind you that you're living in this house."

"Not as of today," Oliver said. "I meant to inform you, mother, that I will be moving into my rooms at Verdant."

Moira's eyes narrowed, and there was a terrible silence between them as she glared at him. "You most certainly are not."

"I'm the Duke of Starling," he said.

"And I'm your mother. I cannot believe that you would even think of leaving – why would you want to go?"

He could not tell her the full truth, not without possibly losing her forever as she became aware that her own son was a murderer and guilty of indirect parricide.

"You," he said, leaving out the prelude of  _I cannot afford to lose or hurt_  before the single word he had uttered. "I cannot live with you. It's always questions, and more questions, and now you've taken to reading my mail. I cannot live here, with you breathing down my neck and constantly expecting me to be at your beck and call - "

There was a sharp sound left ringing in the air even as Oliver's cheek smarted from the slap his mother had inflicted. Her eyes were gleaming with unshed tears; her palm turning a lurid shade of red from the force that she had used as it remained stretched out past his face.

Oliver opened his mouth to salvage the situation.

"Is anything the matter?" Thea's voice was heard from behind her. "I heard raised voices."

"No," Moira said, turning round to face her daughter and briefly pressing the tips of her fingers to the corners of her eyes. Instead of a dressing gown, Thea was garbed in a riding habit, complete with hat and gloves. "It's just a minor misunderstanding…why are you going riding this early in the morning?"

Thea looked unconvinced, but their mother had begun shepherding her back to her room. Oliver watched as their figures disappeared into the darkness of the corridor, into the safety he could only afford them through maintaining his distance.

He wanted to join them, to laugh at their jokes, to grovel at his mother's feet for his lies and the hurt he had caused her, to grumble good-naturedly to fellow men about having extremely demanding females in his family while secretly yearning to return home to them.

Instead he continued out of the house, into the chartered streets of London.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this answers some questions! I'm speeding through the writing, mostly because I am so anxious to write Felicity again (for want of a better word I hope you aren't disappointed by the fact that she doesn't appear), but this one took longer than it should have because I couldn't quite nail down the dialogue. I love that we're back in London again and these next few chapters are really about dealing with the aftermath of what they learnt in Bristol. Caitlin Snow is obviously a Bird of Prey as well; she hails from the family of physicians in Lincolnshire that Felicity references in Chapter 13, and she controls the resurrectionist trade besides being a very good doctor (not formally, of course).
> 
> Oliver being uncomfortable in a moving carriage has been my headcanon for a long time - he only really rides in one when he first returns and when he travels by coach, which is almost always followed by a killing spree because of how unhinged he gets when reminded of the accident. Similarly I've never seen Oliver step onto a yacht on the show, wonder if that's a real secret headcanon the writers have. Note that he has PTSD-induced nightmares; this will be important in an upcoming chapter.
> 
> You get the first line of the Birds of Prey song in this, and I'll be putting the score up on my tumblr blog (pulpklatura). I'll be so chuffed if anyone teaches it to their kids. (Okay I'm joking, I think my nursery rhyme-writing needs work, though I'm very grateful for the efforts of my brother in writing the tune. He wants me to explain that he's put it in the Dorian scale, which is typical of European folk music, as seen in Greensleeves and Celtic tunes).
> 
> Moira's argument with Oliver was the hardest part to write, going through three revisions. I think that Oliver's last words really set her off because of her difficult marriage with philandering Robert, though obviously Oliver doesn't know about all of that. I managed to fit two lines in from the show and I hope you thought they worked.
> 
> Powering through chapter 18 now because I can't wait for the Olicity scene I've got planned!


	18. Felicity

They said the man who lived here controlled the whole of Britain. John had never been able to ascertain his identity, but the speed at which any information reported to this house filtered through the Cabinet and into the Prince Regent’s ear suggested that the saying held a grain of truth.

If the man living here was the government, then Amanda Waller was the gateway to his power and the nexus of its reach.

John rose to his feet as she entered the small, drab room she used as an office, occasionally a waiting room, should she judge there was a need for her informant to see her master personally.

“Mr Diggle,” said the woman, settling down in the armchair opposite his, and arranging her skirts before she looked directly at him. “How did the Duke of Starling enjoy his journey to Bristol?”

John gaped at the housekeeper, who was regarding him with ill-disguised impatience. _She knew_ , he realised. Amanda Waller knew that the Duke of Starling was also the Arrow, and that John had kept from reporting that to the War Office.

“Do sit down, Mr Diggle. And take that flabbergasted expression off your face. How inept do you think Agent Michaels is at her job? We’ve known for the past three days of your employer’s activities, as well as your deliberate decision to not share that bit of information with us.”

He sat, clasping his hands before him. “I notice you did not use the words ‘high treason’.”

Amanda Waller sneered. “You tell me, Mr Diggle. Agent Michaels believes that you should have a chance to explain your miserable self to the War Office before we decide to act.”

“The Duke of Starling. He’s looking for his father’s killer. I have reason to believe that the man is seeking a justice that no existing system can give him, ma’am, and I joined his crusade because he doesn’t know what it means to fight a war, and what it does to you.” John paused, reflecting on how he had never before articulated these thoughts, yet each word uttered now rang with the truth from his heart. “I joined to keep him accountable – to keep him human.”

She poured out a steaming cup of tea and raised it to her mouth, her bright eyes darting with the progress of her thoughts. There was no other cup for guests on the low table next to her, and she set the cup back down on its matching saucer with a clink, having forced him to wait for her decision-making process to finish.

“It would behoove you to remember that his grace is not Andrew,” she said. “But the War Office will allow you to continue monitoring the Starling situation, insofar you regularly provide any information you know will be of interest to us.”

“Ma’am,” he began, bristling slightly at the reference to his brother. “I face a conflict of interests – ”

“Your own personal scruples are not our concern, agent. Either recall that your first allegiance is to the Crown, or tender your resignation. You may go.”

John stood, smoothing over the line of his coat with a hand. “Ma’am, I have a request for the protection of an individual.”

“Of whom do you speak?”

“A woman named Felicity Smoak, ma’am. She has access to Felix Sherwood.”

“Done,” she said, her attention trained on a written report she had picked up and was thumbing through. “Now, do I have to show you the door or can you figure that out yourself?”

John left by the servants’ door, as his cover required of him. The London fog had fallen thickly over its streets and he wove through its cumbrous hold towards Bloomsbury, navigating mostly by memory rather than by sight.

There would be an uncomfortable conversation about his duties that he had to hold with the duke when he returned to his job. But now was the time for him to breathe, to live as if he did not have to creep about investigating others’ lives.

The War Office had informed him of a safe house he could use located on George Street when he had first been briefed about this assignment. As he treaded the pavements in its direction, thoughts about what he had seen in Bristol weighed him down.

He recalled best the moment when he stood at the window of _The Canary’s Posies_ , watching the passers-by, or perhaps more specifically, watching a particular family pass. Details of the memory filtered into his mind’s eye: the brown shade of the woman’s skirts, the wrinkles on the man’s face. This had been a recurring thought on the journey home, especially when the duke grew silent and taciturn with every jolt of the coach.

John shook his head firmly. That was not a memory to dwell upon too deeply. He turned his mind to the Birds of Prey instead, focusing on Oliver’s allusion to the organisation in his explanation on Canary Court and its mistress. Led by a woman that went by the name ‘Oracle’, the Birds of Prey protected any woman who needed to run away from her life, going as far as to give her a new identity to throw off any pursuers.

As the Canary, Sara Raatko ran a safe house for any woman directed to Bristol by their leader, and he presumed Felicity Smoak lent her unique talents to the cause in a different way. The answers were all in the nursery rhyme taught to children across the country, he thought, and he found his lips moving along to the words:

 

_I’ve heard of a land_

_Where sorrows end_

_From the mouth at Delphi_

_No woman need weep_

_Their joys will keep_

_At the cry of a Canary_

_There’s smoke without fire_

_And frost without bite_

_When Birds of Prey_

_Take flight tonight_

_I’ve heard of a land_

_Where sorrows end_

_For the Birds take plights from Delphi_

 

John wondered if the War Office knew about all of this. They probably did and allowed it to happen, he thought, as he reached into the letterbox of Number 2 George Street and found the key to the house. As he opened the door, the accumulated weariness of the past few days finally caught up with him. Removing his hat, he climbed up the stairs to first floor, the strain in his shoulders leaving his body.

A creak was heard behind him and John spun round, his hat falling to the ground and his pistol brandished in its stead.

There was a similar pistol was pointed at his face. Lyla let out a peal of laughter as she recognised him.

“Johnny! Fancy seeing you here.” She lowered her weapon and slipped it into the pocket of her dressing gown, flashing him a wide smile as she said, “Do come in and have breakfast with me.”

 _It would not be proper_ , he told himself, and he started to shake his head. The abatement of his danger-induced alertness gave way to confusion, the words of refusal taking time to form on his tongue.

“Oh don’t stand on ceremony, Johnny,” she chided, tugging his hand. “How often do we get to have a meal together?”

They had never had a meal together, for that very reason. But now he allowed himself, against all better judgment, to follow her into a small chamber appointed like a drawing room, every piece of furniture of a fine quality and exuding elegance.

“Please make yourself at home,” said Lyla, busying herself with scrounging about for the cutlery. She set down her pistol on the mantelpiece, speaking as she did so. “I use these rooms whenever I cannot be bothered to deal with morning calls, and I have no staff on hand here, but the woman that does cleaning brought some pie that we can share, if you don’t mind.”

He took off his greatcoat, and laid it on the back of a chair. “Lyla, I must first apologise for not telling you about the Duke of Starling.”

She turned to face him, surprise crossing her fine features. “Whatever for? I trust you had your reasons, and for the record, I figured it out entirely by myself, so it’s my discovery and my win, really.”

John smiled at her competitive streak, plucking the plates she held from her hands and placing them on the sole table in the room. He tried to ignore how her hair hung loosely about her shoulders in waves and the casual cling of her dressing gown to her body, a far cry from the formal gowns he had always seen her in since she reached adulthood.

“That’s a lot of confidence you have reposed in me.”

“You’ve never failed me when it comes to your judgment, Johnny. Now what brings you to Bloomsbury? Never say the Duke of Starling is seeing someone in this area?”

Lyla sank into a Recamier by the fireplace, balancing a tea set onto the table. As she reached for a plate, one cup slipped off the edge and plummeted towards the carpeted floor. She caught it easily before it hit the ground and shattered, giving the receptacle a cursory inspection before she put it back where she had left it.

“I’ve been given the weekend off. The War Office told me this was a safe house,” replied John, settling down in the chair next to hers.

Lyla scowled. “That doddering old fool!”

“Did Sir George - ”

“Yes, it would appear so. You are most welcome – I simply do not appreciate my father volunteering my rooms for the War Office’s needs without my permission.” She stabbed her slice of pie savagely with her fork as she said, “The man has no respect for even the law when it comes to what he perceives as duty.”

She took a bite, and John marveled at the privilege of being able to watch her have breakfast.

“Surely this isn’t an absolutely awful turn of events,” he said, mirroring her actions and biting into the crust of the pastry.

Her annoyance vented, she mellowed somewhat. “No,” she said honestly. “I’m most happy that you’re here.”

“Me too,” he admitted, although he had stepped into her home intending to spend some time by himself. The fire flickered, and he felt contentment washing over him as he took in the mundane domesticity of it all. For the first time in his life, he dared to think that the tableaux before him could be his future, and his memory of the family he had seen in Bristol surfaced in his mind.

If she would have him, breakfast as such would be a quotidian reality rather than a remote possibility.

“You seem pleased,” remarked Lyla, blowing gently at the surface of her tea and disregarding what etiquette she should have displayed as the daughter of a baronet, and the widow of a baron’s son, as she slouched and took a sip.

“I saw a possibility during my time in Bristol.”

“What stops you from pursuing it?”

“Society,” he said, and she scoffed.

“Society would never allow for the cloak and dagger life we both live, and yet here we are. You’ve never let society stop you from doing what you believed to be right, whether it was leaving the battlefields of India and coming into our line of work, or encouraging me to stay strong when Mr Michaels passed on, and I needed something to divert my mind. What is the real reason behind that excuse you’ve given?”

John paused, noting the soft glow of morning light caressing her high cheekbones. He wanted to trace the light with his fingers, and with his mouth. “A part of me is scared, Lyla. It’s a dream I never dared to have, not even in my imagination, until now.”

She chortled, a low sound in her throat that never failed to go straight to his groin. “John Diggle, afraid?”

“Absolutely terrified.”

“Whatever is this dream of yours, John? And don’t you dare say that it’s me beating you at whatever competition we’re in when we’re both crotchety dotards.”

He had never once told her of his feelings, nor heard her speak of hers, though he had always known from the depths of his gut that he was destined to be hers, whether she wanted him or not.

John reached forward to take the plate from her, eyes not leaving hers as he set it aside and took her hand.

“I have held you in the highest of regards for a long time, Lyla,” he said quietly. “Always have. Always will. And I’ve never dared to hope for more than just the privilege of loving you in private, but when I was in Bristol, I saw a family living my dream. I have no expectations as I tell you this now, only to profess a truth I’ve never been able to articulate before.”

He would always remember the events that followed after his confession. Lyla had froze the moment he touched her ungloved hand, skin against skin. She blinked once, and then twice, before pulling him closer to where she sat, her hand – slightly callused from her riding and rapier-training days – coming up to the nape of his neck.

“Silly Johnny,” she breathed, more beautiful than he had ever seen her before in her expression of utmost bliss. “Whatever took you so long?”

“I was afraid,” he replied, even as she pressed her mouth to his in a light kiss, and he placed a timorous hand on her hip, his head giddy with incredulity. “As you said.”

Lyla leaned back, her eyes roving over his earnest mien, her gaze so full of love that any doubts remaining in him waned. “Well, I’m here now.”

John kissed the woman that he had loved for all his life, with courage and with every exultation he had ever hoped for.

* * *

Lady Thea Queene was having one of her happy days. Her dress was not tight anywhere, the lace bertha stayed in place, the rosettes did not get crumpled or come off, and best of all, her mother had allowed her to wear the most delightful string of sapphires around her neck, complete with a matching bracelet. The jewels brought out the intensity of the dark blue trimmings she had insisted upon at the modiste’s, and she stepped onto the Starling House ballroom now, her eyes shining and her ruddy lips smiling from her own attractiveness.

It was her brother’s twenty-eighth birthday, the first one he would celebrate with the family in five years, and therefore it was inconsequential that her mother and brother were at arms. Vicious argument that very morning aside, Oliver had stayed away from Starling House for most of the day and had yet to arrive for his own party. Despite the whiling away of time, there had been no opportunity to present to him the gift she had prepared, which was still lying on the parlour table where she had left it.

She entered the Starling House ballroom, surveying the entire crush of gauzy frocks and severely-cut coats. One of her swains came up to her immediately, and Thea extended a hand to him, pretending she did not notice how the _ton_ leaned behind their fans and traded whispers about the Queenes. That was irrelevant; talk was to be expected when one occupied a position of prominence. Besides, the topics that enthralled the _ton_ were predictably limited to her mother’s murky relationship with Walter Steele, as well as whether Lady Thea Queene would marry or bring ignominy to the family.

She held her head high and greeted the peeress next to her as prettily as she had been taught, thanking her graciously and profusely for her generosity to the Queene family in coming for the ball. That Oliver was nowhere to be seen was not commented on, but Thea had a witty reply ready for any crass enough to ask.

This was a battlefield on which women fought, to the strains of an orchestra’s violins and the titter of the unforgiving crowd, and Thea had learnt from the best. She had grown up watching how Moira’s cool demeanour and self-possession could be used to browbeat anyone less confident into submission, and she did not forget how easily the _ton_ had turned their backs on Laurel after the disgrace that was brought to both their families five years ago.

She was their darling today, their diamond of the first water, and she would not give them any reason to discard her from that favoured position, even as they laughed at her behind her back.

A ripple of surprise coursed through the crowd, and the efficiency with which information was disseminated in a ballroom gave her a swift indication of her brother’s much anticipated arrival.

The Duke of Starling had brought a guest uninvited by his mother, a statuesque brunette from the Continent who hung on his arm and stared in a most unfriendly manner at anyone who dared approach the two of them.

Thea cast a quick glance where her mother was standing at the opposite end of the room, laughing visibly at something her sole companion had said. Walter’s mouth was lifted in a wry smile, and Thea guessed that he had probably said something self-deprecating in jest, which never failed to make her mother laugh. Caught up in their own world, they clearly had not noticed the arrival of the duke.

She had to learn more about the situation before she could act. Leaning to better hear the conversation ensuing amongst the party she had joined, she caught snatches of cruel barbs being traded, and waited for the talk to turn to the woman accompanying Oliver.

“The Countess Rocheva,” declared Lord Chase, who prided himself on being the First to Know Things, quite apart from his existing status as the Pinkest of the Pinks. They all watched as Oliver danced his third waltz with the woman, holding her far closer than was strictly necessary for the already risqué dance. “I’m told that she just arrived in London earlier this week.”

“It’s said that she introduced herself to him,” added another person in the sort of hushed tones intended for the entire ballroom to hear. “At the Wilson house party.”

Thea rather thought her brother did not mind the countess’s impertinence, inasmuch as both of them looked distinctively joyless with each turn they took. Oliver could perhaps be excused for the urbane ennui that every rake-aspirant in the younger set tried so hard to emulate, though to little success, but the countess wore a humourless mask of haughty disdain, and the corners of her lips only rose ever so slightly whenever Oliver leaned in to whisper something into her ear.

A movement caught her attention. Her mother had discovered the interloper, and moved from her corner of the ballroom. To the rest of the _ton_ , the Duchess of Starling remained cordial and dignified, but Thea saw the slight hardening of her mouth, each one of her smiles taking on a rather brittle quality the longer she was aware of the countess’s presence.

Thea excused herself just as Lord Chase made a snide remark about a young heiress’s appearance - “…why, it’s as if we needed more jewels to recall that her family used to be mining stock before they inherited!” - to flit to her mother’s side.

“Lady Thea,” greeted Walter with a friendly smile. “You look dazzling this evening.”

“Save your compliments for the duchess, good sir,” she twinkled up at the man who had been a father figure for the past five years, wondering how to broach the topic of Oliver’s companion to her mother.

There was a large commotion to their right – a couple had tripped over while dancing and implicated two other waltzing couples, leaving all of them in a mortifying tangle on the polished floor about the potted plants, complete with crooked coiffures and torn hems. Ever the gracious hostess, Moira went forward with the intention to escort any casualties to the appropriate retiring room.

“Mother,” Oliver’s voice was heard; the crowd went silent as he approached the duchess. “May I have the pleasure of introducing the Countess Yelizaveta Rocheva? Isabel, my mother, the Duchess of Starling.”

His use of the woman’s first name in public startled Thea, but Moira, who had been leaning forward to help a young debutante up, merely straightened, and leveled a cool glance at the other woman.

All watched with rapt attention as the duchess then deliberately looked away, and turned to her other guests with a question intended to start casual conversation. It was the cut direct, which put Thea herself in the unfortunate position of choosing between her brother and her mother with regard to whether to make the woman’s acquaintance.

The woman Oliver had addressed as Isabel clearly understood the social implications of Moira’s cut despite being a foreigner, the corner of her lips lifting as if she relished the challenge that the duchess had given her. Oliver himself radiated displeasure even as he continued smiling, and Thea felt a panic at the simmering discord that was about to flare up.

“Countess,” said Oliver. “If you would excuse me for a moment.”

She nodded, and stated that she would retire to the ladies’ room for a spell, which removed herself from the eyes of the _ton_.

“Mother,” Oliver continued, apparently not perturbed by the fact that all eyes and ears were on them. “I do believe that there was something in the parlour that Thea wished for us to see. Would you be so kind as to recuse yourself from your duties for the time being?” He directed the next line at the crowd, raising his volume to project his voice. “I’m sure our guests will not mind.”

Moira took his arm and followed his lead out of the ballroom, her demeamour as gracious as a hostess’s should be to everyone they passed. Thea trailed them closely, her mind racing as she decided upon her position in the dispute between the two of them.

The duchess stopped short the moment they reached the stairwell leading to the ground floor, the very location of their argument that morning, but now decorated with flowers and flooded with candlelight. “I will respect your rank to this degree, duke, but I will not be going anywhere with you. Now if you will excuse me, I need to return to my guests.”

Oliver dropped the genial face he had put on in the ballroom. “Mother, I will apologise for the things I said this morning, but your behaviour towards Isabel was reprehensible. She deserves none of the ire you feel for me, and your drastic actions were entirely disproportionate.”

Moira smiled then, not the amiable pursing of her lips she used to put her lessers at ease, or the lovely grin she flashed those that secured her favour, but the polite, glacial expression that she showed anyone who had displeased her and was about to be put in their place.

“I see that my prodigal son sees fit to judge his mother for the speck in her eye even as he has not made reparations for any of his recent behaviour. In the absence of your respect, I have no inclination to account for my choices and the reasons behind them, though if you have any regard left for me, you will cease your association with Isabel Rochev immediately.” She started for the ballroom, pausing only at a nearby mirror in the corridor to check her hair and dress before she returned to the crush.

Oliver lifted his hands to his face, inhaling deeply in an effort to remain calm. “Mother,” he called after her, the firm undercurrent in his voice a warning.

“By the by, I left your letters in your study. I hope you can read them despite the plank obscuring your vision.”

Her footsteps grew fainter as she left both her children behind.

“What is the matter with you?” Thea finally said. “I heard your entire row this morning, and I don’t believe there was a single person in the house who did not hear her allude to your being perennially absent, or your failure to recognise that she’s just concerned about you.”

Oliver began walking away, headed for his study, which was at the front of the house on the first floor. “What happened this morning was nothing. A minor misunderstanding,” he replied, a little too quickly.

“Ollie, I will not be lied to.” She followed him into his study, whereupon he began an inspection of the room, presumably in search of something. Her frustrations mounted as he walked past her to check the cupboard behind her. “There must be a reason you’ve been ignoring your family ever since you’ve returned. You appear more often in the scandal sheets than at home, but every time you think no one is watching, I see your fake smiles give way to the type of grave expressions usually reserved for escorting hearses.”

As she spoke he picked up a stack of envelopes, and one of them caught his especial attention. With every word he read, his mouth set itself into a grim line, and his brow knitted.

“I would you confided in someone, Ollie,” Thea implored the older brother that had never failed to find time to teach her to shoot, to ride and to swim when they were younger, despite their large age difference. “Please. Tell us what is wrong. We can remedy it together as a family.”

Oliver slipped his all-important letter into his pocket, finally giving her his regard. “Thea, send my regards to our mother and the countess. There is something I must see to immediately.”

His words came as a rude awakening; she threw up a hand as if to stop the wave of shock that his behaviour was causing in her. “Ollie, the _ton_ is waiting for you to show that there is no discord amongst the Queenes.”

But he had left before she finished her last word, an expression of grim determination resolutely on his face as he strode away.

Thea swallowed, fortifying her defenses against any intrusive questions to come as her smile grew brighter and more attractive, designed to evoke a feeling of awe and admiration in all who saw her. She stepped into the ballroom again, grateful that her slippers did not pinch her feet and that her loveliness appeared entirely unintentional, as if she was born as ebullient as she was that very moment.

She was Lady Thea. And Lady Thea Dearden Queene was having a happy day. 

* * *

But for the gravediggers and weeping angels of stone, all cemeteries were usually little isles of seclusion amidst the clutter and noise of urbanisation. The parochial chapel of St Mary Magdalen in Southwark Priory was no different, particularly where its thirteen-century façade was now in a derelict despondency matched only by the empty galleries and pews that packed the priory’s innards.

Oliver entered the chapel, where an effigy depicting a woman with uncovered hair greeted him. The sound of his footsteps reverberated off the walls, testament to the emptiness in this place of worship.

 _She was supposed to be here_.

Pulling out the envelope that had directed him to this place, he examined its wording again with what little moonlight that penetrated the glass windows.

The letter itself contained salutations and best wishes in respect of his birthday from Slade Wilson. It was the envelope itself that had arrested his interest. All mail to Slade’s house went through Whaddon in South Cambridgeshire, but the franking had serious spelling errors. Specifically, Whaddon was spelled ‘Warkdon’ and there was what looked like a line of hastily scrawled gibberish under the word ‘South’.

Oliver had recognised the rudimentary code he had once sent to F. M. Smoak the moment he laid eyes on the envelope. The message was a single word – ‘chapel,’ which sent him from Starling House to Southwark immediately, first on foot past the crawling carriages lined up in Mayfair’s streets, then in a hack across the city.

He walked past the empty pews to the altar, unable to descry any message that may perhaps have been left for him, if she did not intend to meet him here. On a whim he approached the confessional, which stood inconspicuously at the side of the room.

The wooden door came off its hinges and fell to the ground with a loud clatter that Oliver rather regretted causing. As he picked it up and set it by the side of the booth, he noticed that the confessional had become a makeshift wardrobe of sorts, with choir robes and thick blankets alike stuffed into both sides of its interior. There was even a pair of candlesticks lying on base of the booth.

Oliver bit back his dismay. Perhaps there was another church or chapel she had meant, or perhaps he just needed to return here on Tuesday, as she had originally set as the meeting date. He turned to leave, but some curious impulse suddenly compelled him to return to the confessional and push the robes aside.

The woman hiding in the confessional let out a yelp at being discovered, even as the pinch of anxiety that he had hitherto been unaware of loosened its hold over his heart.

“Oliver!” exclaimed Felicity, recognition reaching her blue gaze, and she broke into a wide grin of relief. “You came!”

She rose to her feet and her knees crumpled almost immediately, her head lolling back and the colour falling from her face. Oliver threw his arms around her to hold her up, a hand at her waist and the other cradling her head at the nape of her neck.

“…I’m so very sorry…” she mumbled, the two hands she had rested on his chest shuddering and her eyelids fluttering shut. “Haven’t quite eaten in three days…”

Oliver felt displeasure mounting in him as he took in the shadows under her eyes, the pinch in her cheeks and the sooty streaks in her hair. Her symptoms were unmistakably the product of prolonged hunger; he had seen this before, and it was imperative she get warmth, food, and medical attention immediately. He picked her up and carried her out of the chapel, headed straight for where the hack he had come in waited outside.

Gritting his teeth, he directed the driver to Verdant as he discarded his coat and arranged her on his lap, wrapping the coat around her frame and clasping his hands around hers so as to share his warmth with her.

“I’m sending for my family physician, Felicity, unless you have any specific doctor in mind?”

Her eyes were still closed as she responded weakly from where she was leaning against his shoulder, “There’s no need. I’m fine, really…”

“I beg to differ, and am overruling that particular wish of yours. We’ll get three of them if necessary.”

She smiled faintly but otherwise did not respond, and although the movement of the vehicle unsettled him as it always did, there was a certain equanimity that he felt from having her safe and by his side at last, which he surmised was likely due to the fact that she was his one lead for accomplishing his goal of avenging his father.

He began to rub her icy hands gently, and they travelled swiftly across London Bridge towards St James’ Street, leaving the ebb and flow of the swirling Thames behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First disclaimer - the first paragraph in Thea's section is almost word for word lifted from Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation of Anna Karenina, which is my favourite book of all time, (tied with a couple of other books like Jane Eyre). If you thought that was well-written, all credit goes to them and Tolstoy, not me. Also I forgot to state that Mrs Resik from the previous chapter was Sebastian Blood's mother in the show.
> 
> The best chapters to write are the ones where you are constrained by your speed of research rather than ideas, and this was one of them. I referenced three different genres, all a variation on the chapter's theme and I hope the entirety didn't come off as too disjointed. The Sherlock joke in Diggle's section is intended, as is the Dr Who reference in Felicity's section. George Street is now Gower Street, and I specifically picked Number 2 because that is where a famous suffragist lived.
> 
> When I first realised I was going to be writing Thea, I also knew that my major inspiration would be Kitty's experience in Part 1 Chapter 13 of Anna Karenina, although the whole section eventually took three rewrites because I couldn't quite decide if there should be Intense Ballroom Dancing. It was improper for someone of lower rank to introduce themselves directly to a higher ranked person; hence the disapproval surrounding Oliver's first meeting with Isabel. Pinkest of the Pinks meant a very fashionable man, which Chase presumably is. The cut direct was the gravest insult anyone could level in society, short of calling them all sorts of names and/or sleeping with their wife/sister and not marrying her, and Moira's reference to the speck in her eye as opposed to the plank in Oliver's is a direct allusion to Matthew 7:3 from the New Testament. Thea's last conversation with Oliver is inspired by the scene where they were waiting for the verdict of Moira's trial.
> 
> Felicity's section is once again inspired by the Gothic genre, what with dilapidated churches and the like. Southwark Priory was actually already the parish church of St Saviour's by 1812, after the dissolution of the priory following Henry VIII's disassociation from Rome in the 1540s. The parochial chapel ceased to be specially dedicated to Mary Magdalene but I wanted to continue the Magdalene theme from where Felicity had asked Oliver to pick her up at first and I wanted a confessional so I guess my scene takes place in an alternate timeline where the priory had yet to be dissolved. As a sidenote Whaddon is the closest town to Wimpole Hall in South Cambridgeshire, which is where I would have Slade's house be in the context of this story (though I based the architecture on Haddon Hall instead). Felicity's message is very obvious but I rather suspect people don't inspect the mail they send out all that thoroughly, and Slade wouldn't be able to decipher it as quickly as Oliver did.
> 
> This chapter was always intended for the Dyla fans rather than the Olicity fans, though I hope both groups enjoyed the scenes. It's the next chapter where I have the Olicity scene that has been urging me to write quicker all week, and I'll hopefully see all of you there!


	19. Nocturne

Laurel had returned to London with her thoughts and feelings in a tangle. For one thing, her rapprochement with her sister produced only a truce, and not a peace treaty. They had nearly sparked off another spat with their last exchange when they reached Canary Court, because Sara flatly refused Laurel’s request that their parents be informed of her circumstances.

“Absolutely not,” said Sara, with a shake of her blonde curls. “Father and mother can never know.”

“Mother is sick,” Laurel pointed out brusquely. “And father has become obsessed with Bow Street and brandy.”

“And they will get better, as long as you don’t upset the pattern we’ve all fallen into,” Sara retorted stubbornly.

The stony façade of Canary Court had appeared before them then, and Laurel chose to rein in her frustration just so she could part from her sister in a civil manner. She privately vowed there and then that she would write a letter to Bristol at first opportunity upon reaching London to persuade Sara otherwise, but it had scarcely been an evening since she arrived at Lance House, and already her duties were piling up, what with Dinah not having been turned properly or brought out for fresh air while she was away, or the mountain of social correspondence that her father had predictably ignored.

Tommy’s sudden reticence in their relations also befuddled her. After the siege on Canary Court, she could sense him drawing back from her every time they were alone, much to her puzzlement. Was it because she had brought up memories of his mother in Bristol? He was not the sort to comport himself oddly for no rhyme or reason, and his striking Oliver on her behalf surely meant that it was not her he was upset at, so what was it indeed that had prompted his diffidence?

Laurel lifted the pitcher left by her bed to pour a glass of water out for herself, but it was empty. She rose, thinking that Tommy’s worry likely stemmed from his relationship with Oliver, given that he had dropped her off at Lance House and headed straight for Starling House the moment they arrived in Mayfair.

That made sense – she had never known them to be really at arms before, and Tommy was above all things a peacemaker. Since he despised conflict, it was entirely natural for him to fret about tensions amongst his friends.

She padded down the corridor in search of the kitchen, her throat and lips dry. Two tall figures were standing in the entrance hall on the ground floor, one of whom she recognised to be her father.

“Laurel,” he said, upon spying her approach, not without some degree of sheepishness. “You’re up early.”

She gave the nearby clock face a quick glance. It was four in the morning, and no time to be heading out for a respectable call.

“So are you, father. Whereabouts are you and this gentleman here going?”

Quentin recalled his manners then. “Mr Samuel, my eldest daughter. Laurel, this is Mr Samuel Winchester. Young Mr Samuel here’s from Bow Street.”

“Delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Lance,” said the runner, a touch of public school in his accent. _Harrow_ , she guessed.

“I would return the sentiment if not for the fact that you appear to be taking my father from his home at this late hour,” she said, flashing him a friendly but wary smile. “Pray, what peril does your visit portend?”

Mr Samuel Winchester appeared very uncomfortable at the question. Her father, better acquainted with Laurel’s stomach for unladylike subjects, answered.

“There’s been a series of homicides, Laurel. No doubt you’ll hear the sanitised version by tomorrow, but suffice to say it’s serious enough that the Chief Magistrate thinks I should be informed immediately.”

Her father was a champion for increasing law enforcement in London, and all at Number 4 Bow Street knew him to be a most sympathetic ear in the House of Lords were they ever in need.

Laurel nodded slowly, wondering if knowledge of Sara’s life in Bristol would cure her father of his twin obsessions, or if the damage was irreparable in their family after all these years. At least the vice he indulged in at present was not drink.

“I’ll see you at church then, father. Mr Samuel, I trust you to keep my father safe.”

The runner inclined his head and she watched them leave Lance House, wondering what sort of felonious homicide required a peer’s attention at this time in the night. 

* * *

He had been most high-handed as he fussed over her the moment they reached his gaming hell. Having dismissed most of his staff and put a stop to all his members’ revelry, he had proceeded to growl at his cook for only having pork stew and ham sandwiches at hand and set down to preparing an omelette himself – Felicity had not expected that – after he fired his admittedly temperamental cook for being unwilling to whip something else up immediately.

He had even questioned his physician’s prescription of food and extended rest until Felicity was forced to lay a restraining hand on his forearm to prevent the Duke of Starling from inspiring a man to violence.

All this while she had relished the delicious tendril of warmth forming in her chest, until Oliver irritably turned to her when she had refused his attempt to consult another physician and snapped, “I need you to recover as soon as possible so that we can get started on our work, Felicity. Stop hindering my efforts in this regard.”

That had brought her crashing down to earth, though he heeded her request, and she thought now that perhaps it was for the better as she climbed out of the hipbath left in the room designated as hers for the night and toweled herself dry.

The Duke of Starling was the type of man that one could lose one’s head over all too easily. Apollonian looks aside, there was the raffish air he exuded effortlessly, not to mention his status and wealth, which understandably drew attention more potently than ever a flame did mottled moths. Most important was the distinct impression she had that underneath all that alternating gruffness and charm, he was a good man in possession of a drive to accomplish something difficult, which was a definite warning bell where she was concerned.

The daughter of Donna Smoak did not need another man that would abandon her once he had gotten what he wanted to further his ultimate goal. That had been the lesson her father had taught her when he left, one further reinforced by her experience with Mr Cooper Seldon in her younger days, and one that she dearly needed reminding of in respect of her dealings with the duke now.

Then again, Felicity had never been able to fully disabuse herself of the notion that was hope.

As she pulled on the silk nightshirt the duke had handed her – one of his own, he had apologised, a temporary stopgap measure until they visited her modiste on Monday to pick up the order he had put in earlier that day – Felicity repeated to herself the guiding principle for her life thus far. She had to know her worth, uninfluenced by pride or society, and so chart her own journey despite the vicissitudes of life. If she thought of domestic contentment, she had to find a husband who did not mind a bluestocking of questionable background, and whom she was confident would never leave her.

And that was why it was dangerous for Felicity to even think of the duke as Oliver. Hunger tended to produce honesty in people, and her hastily improvised and not that great in hindsight escape plan from South Cambridgeshire had given her multiple opportunities to privately confess her intense attraction to him.

It could not be, and would never be. After all, even in the unlikely event he was even remotely interested, Felicity had vowed to never be a man’s mistress. And so it was imperative that she disavow any signs of infatuation.

She closed her eyes for rest – _at last!_ – and dreams grounded in practicality, until a loud cry woke her from her slumber.

Felicity sat up immediately. The sound was emitting from the room next to hers, and it seemed as though someone was suffering great pain.

Not bothering to fumble about the darkness of her room for her spectacles and a candle, she headed straight for the source of the shouting, compassion guiding her actions.

She found him thrashing about in his bedclothes, as if he was struggling to be free of something or someone. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and his voice was hoarse with every cry of “No! Father! Father!” he screamed.

“Oliver,” she whispered, narrowly avoiding the blow he threw out against his intangible attacker, reaching for his shoulder to wake him.

The moment her fingers touched his bare skin, he tightened a large hand over her wrist and pulled her down.

Felicity blinked up dazedly at Oliver, whose body now bracketed hers against his bed. As her vision cleared somewhat she noticed that his right hand pinned her wrist firmly over her head, and his other arm was raised over her as if to protect her head from the demons he had been fighting.

He too was blinking slowly, finally awakening from his nightmare.

“Felicity,” he breathed, his voice but a whisper she could feel as a rumble through the thin nightshirt that separated them. Their faces were close enough for his breath to brush her forehead.

“Yes?” she replied, hating how breathless and asinine she sounded. He was still hyperventilating, but his breathing grew even and his gaze grew more alert as his consciousness tore itself free from the remnants of his dreams.

Oliver frowned, taking in their current positions, though he remained tense and did not remove his weight from her.

“…I could have killed you in my sleep.”

He sounded pejorative, though she felt the ire was directed mostly at himself, not her.

“No, you wouldn’t have,” she said with a certainty that was as curious in origin as the level of confidence with which her intuition regarded her words as indubitable truth. “You were trying to protect me – see how your arm shields my head? You knew it was me.”

Felicity waited as his eyes travelled upwards to ascertain the veracity of her observations, growing more and more aware of the fact that she could feel every ridge of his torso through the silk she was wearing, which itself was growing damp from the sheen of perspiration that had broken out on his body as he struggled earlier.

She did not know, and dared not look to verify, if the half of his body not currently pressed up against her was clothed. A bloom of heat was rising to her cheeks as it did in her traitorous body, and she realised that if she could feel every muscle on his body through his shirt, he would be able to detect the hardening of her -

“Oh god…” she moaned, closing her eyes in mortification. There was a case to be made for blasphemy being entirely appropriate for the circumstances given how embarrassed she felt.

“Am I hurting you?” Oliver immediately asked, sounding most concerned.

“You’re…” She gulped, entirely flustered and her every word forced as she thought desperately of how to best articulate her request that he extricate his form from hers as soon as possible. “…you’re really sweaty…”

That was not quite the right thing to say either. She was grateful that Oliver declined to respond and merely rolled over to her side, releasing her wrist as he did so. He did not speak, and some part of her knew that his silence was as pensive as hers was born of the awkwardness she felt.

There was only the sound of their breathing filling the air while she recovered her composure. As she recalled what she had first seen when she entered his room, her heart filled with a bittersweet emotion she did not want to put a name to.

“Thank you for coming to meet me today,” she said softly, sensing that he would neither request she stayed nor ask her to leave, but insofar she did not broach the question of his nightmares, he would allow her to remain where she laid by his side.

It was a long pause before he replied. “We’ll go to Starling House tomorrow to retrieve the papers. How would you like me to introduce you?”

“As ‘Felicity Smoak’.”

She had expended some effort ruminating on this detail while she was clandestinely riding the wagon that took her towards London, a vehicle she had secreted her person onto while its driver took a break by the side of the road near Whaddon.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes,” she said sharply. “I refuse to be ashamed of the mother who bore and raised me as well as she could even though it would have been much easier to abandon her child while she was still young.”

“I didn’t mean you should forsake her. I merely wondered if it was sensible to alert Slade to your presence immediately by using your real name.”

“He has eyes and ears looking for a woman of my description everywhere. That’s the only reason why I dared not set foot outside of the chapel once I reached London and finished the few buns I managed to filch from Slade’s house. Given the circumstances, I think it’s far safer if society is watching my every move, than for us to fail immediately at secrecy.”

As she spoke she felt her limbs grow languid, the impropriety of her resting-place insufficient deterrence to the weariness that took hold of her senses.

“Besides, I would think that your dual identities as Duke of Starling and the Arrow would be able to stave off any mad schemes of his to abduct me,” she mumbled into the darkness.

“You recognised my handwriting.” There was a tinge of admiration in his voice.

“Mmm,” she murmured, too drowsy to enunciate her response.

There was another long silence, this time companionable, before he spoke again. “Felicity?”

“Hmm?” She stirred slightly from her slumber, unsure if she was dreaming up the slight pressure of another, much larger hand reaching for her own.

“Thank you.”

 

When she awoke at midday, he was gone. The blankets were tucked tightly about her person, lending an air of decency to her presence in the room. Peeling the blanket off, she sternly said to herself, “His grace wants you to recover to full health just so you can work for him.”

Once that was accomplished, she returned to her room, where a full set of clothes was laid out neatly on the bed in place of the dusty, torn gown she had worn last night. A note had been left for her, bearing the message ‘ _Filched from my sister’s wardrobe. Hope it fits. Don’t believe she will notice._ ’ in his familiar hand.

For someone that had most definitely attended the best schools England had to offer, the duke’s penmanship was terrible. She catalogued the garments before she pulled off the oversized nightshirt he had lent her, and dressed herself.

“This is precisely why his grace is a dangerous person,” she said aloud, trying not to admire the ethereal beauty of the sprigged muslin frock he had selected. Not a single piece of a woman’s day accouterments was missing, be it spencer or petticoat. “He’s too well-acquainted with a woman’s wardrobe.”

As she secured the straw bonnet that would render her respectable for a jaunt outdoors, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror.

She had only ever owned one white dress in her life, it being presumptuous and highly impractical for any woman not a wealthy lady to wear the colour. His sister was more slender than she was, but the frock nevertheless made her look like an ingénue all the same, in the first blush of her youth.

Felicity sighed. The man was a menace even when he was not trying to impress.

She descended the stairs in search of the duke, only to find a brown-haired young man of medium height waiting for her.

He gave her a smile upon laying eyes on her. “Good morning, Miss Smoak. His grace wished me to escort you to Starling House.”

“And you are…?” she trailed off, unsure if he was someone she could trust.

“Roy Harper. I serve the Duke of Starling as a stablehand, among other things.” The words that he chose spoke of a better education than most stablehands would have had, though she could detect the vowels of a Cockney in his accent.

“What numbers among said ‘other things’?” she asked, following him out of the gaming hell into a phaeton parked outside. Roy picked up the reins and directed the horse onto the busy street.

“Well, for a start, today I’m a tiger,” he quipped, gesturing at the striped waistcoat he wore, as the wheels of the phaeton began rolling towards their destination.

 

There were a number of vehicles outside the house as they drew up the pavement, and unless the Queenes were eccentrically inviting all who passed to peer into their home, the front door was uncharacteristically left ajar.

Roy seemed perturbed. “Something’s wrong,” he muttered, confirming her suspicions.

Felicity alighted from the phaeton, uttering a hasty thanks to Roy and stepping into the entrance hall. Starling House was far grander and larger than any other home in London she had ever stepped into, but the Georgian terrace house was a fairly standard creature when it came to architectural design. She followed the sound of voices to what she reckoned was a drawing room, given its elaborate furnishings, where a group of people, the duke included, were gathered.

“Let me ask you again, your grace.” A dark-haired man of middle-age demanded in a most hostile manner. His dressing identified himself as a man of means, though his beaver hat sat askew on his head.  “Where were you between two and four this morning?”

Oliver did not answer, his eyes locked on Felicity as a woman she presumed was his mother retorted, “Really now, viscount. Are you expecting us to believe that a peer of the realm – a duke at that – would suddenly go on a murdering spree on the night of his birthday ball?”

The viscount indicated a longbow that lay on a nearby table. “With all due respect, duchess, everyone present knew that you had a disagreement before he left Starling House alone at midnight. All the bodies were left by an archer and it is no secret that your son has associated himself with an enigmatic individual known as the Arrow. Furthermore, I came across him myself near Hyde Park when he first returned from his mysterious five years away – time during which he could have honed his murderous instincts – and he claimed to be the sole witness to a series of murders then. I’m afraid I don’t believe he was only a witness then, duchess. I see a murder weapon before me now, and a possible motive, unless his grace here can account for those two hours he was away from home.”

“This is preposterous,” fumed the Duchess of Starling, pacing where she stood by the window. “You cannot indict someone on mere coincidence, much less a peer of the realm.”

“I’ll personally ensure that this will be tried in the House of Lords,” snarled the viscount. “Justice will be done.”

“Then let the law look elsewhere for the true culprit,” declared Felicity boldly.

All eyes turned to her, and she saw Oliver shake his head sternly at her, a clear warning that she should not supply her testimony regarding his alibi. She recalled how he had sworn the doctor to secrecy last night, threatening to ruin the man should he speak of treating a woman in Verdant, and so destroy what little claim to decency she had left in her reputation.

He was such a dunderhead; the truth of his innocence was not worth sacrificing for whatever the _ton_ would think of her for being alone with a man at that time of the night.

“Who are you?” asked the viscount, exasperation crossing his strong features from the interruption she had caused. The duchess too raked a skeptical eye across her figure, her questions about Felicity’s background and purpose all too clear in her gaze.

“My name is Felicity Smoak,” she said, knowing as she spoke that there was no going back from this. “And his grace was with me at Verdant between the hours of two and four in the morning last night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first cast this chapter in my mind, I always knew that my Bow Street Runners would be the Winchester brothers, because DC owns the Supernatural comics, and because there are no cops of note in Arrow beyond McKenna and Quentin's friend who dies before I can even learn his name. It occurs to me that Chapters 18 and 19 can be seen as fanservice for Arrow fans who also belong to the SuperWhoLock fandom. But it's the Oliciters whom this chapter is dedicated to, and I sinceriously hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Quentin calls Sam 'Mr Samuel' because Dean, being older, would naturally be 'Mr Winchester'. I'll leave to you to devise the story of how they came to be at Bow Street, and whether they actually are runners. Felicity has known Oliver is the Arrow since Chapter 12. I'll also leave you to decide if Oliver was merely shirtless in this chapter, or if he has yet to replace the coarse nightclothes that Diggle gave away in Chapter 4. I debated long and hard whether to preserve the "...you're sweaty" line from the show, looking up the etymology of the word 'sweating' and gnashing my teeth about it before deciding to bite the bullet and including it as it more or less was, anachronistic or not.
> 
> Roy's striped waistcoat was an actual thing - http://www.georgianindex.net/horse_and_carriage/carriages.html says a tiger was a boy employed as a cute groom to ride on the back of a curricle. I'm not sure about 'boy' despite Thea's reference to him as such in Chapter 9 but the guise would have lent him anonymity as he drove about London.
> 
> The last scene actually takes place in the parlour, and the bow was Thea's present to Oliver from the previous chapter. I've tried to show the class difference between Felicity and Oliver when writing her through her observations of his world, and she thinks it's a drawing room, which is traditionally the better furnished, more public of the two, because Oliver's family is rich beyond her experiences. Following her declaration of Oliver's whereabouts, Felicity's status as a fallen woman in the eyes of the ton is more or less confirmed, which accords with how everyone in QC thought she slept her way to her position in Season 2. Needless to say, Moira will not approve.
> 
> Lastly, a peer of the realm could only be tried for his crimes in the House of Lords as opposed to the King's Bench, as indicated in the very writ brought by law-enforcers. Quentin being Quentin would certainly have made it happen, if Felicity was not there to foil his plans.


	20. Folly

Even as the damning words had left her mouth, the Duchess of Starling flattened her mouth into a disapproving line, and Oliver grimaced slightly.

 _Obloquy_ , Felicity thought, because her mind liked to be helpful in times like this, and a sinking feeling reached her gut.

The viscount clearly did not appreciate the new information. He regarded her suspiciously for a second, and then whipped round to consult the two men behind him on the possibility of hauling her to Bow Street for a thorough questioning.

Felicity tried to keep outwardly calm. If she was indeed brought to Bow Street, then the details of her previous employment might leak out, which would further implicate her and thrust Oliver’s acquaintanceship with her into a bad light.

The duchess let out a short burst of nervous laughter then, uttering,  “You won’t believe how relieved I am to hear this, Miss Smoak.” She placed a hand on her son’s shoulder, beaming up at the group. “I do believe breakfast has been interrupted for long enough, and your clarification gives me the peace of mind I need, after the…unpleasantness this morning.”

Felicity observed the knowing gleam in the duchess’s eye as the older woman extended a gracious hand to the two men that accompanied the viscount – presumably runners. The gesture was a mark of favour from one of her rank, and they bowed over it before they apologised for the time they had taken and left the room.

The viscount was somewhat less repentant about his barging into Starling House, adjusting his hat and directing to Oliver in a growl the words, “This isn’t over.”

With the departure of the runners, the amiability projected by the Duchess of Starling fell away. She shot the viscount a frosty look, and said, “I would be less hasty to make an enemy of a Queene if I were you, viscount. I trust not a word about this encounter will leave these four walls.”

Viscount Lance made a contemptuous sound. “What makes you think that you have a hold over me, duchess? Why shouldn’t the _ton_ be jury to the duke’s acts and omissions?”

“Simply because the societal position of Miss Lance has long depended upon the favour of a patroness such as myself, viscount. Keep your dogs at Bow Street in line, or I will rethink my sponsorship of your lovely girl.”

His face darkened and he took a menacing step towards her. “You dare to ruin her five years ago and now threaten her…”

“Oh I certainly do,” said the duchess coolly. “Insofar I have a marriageable daughter and a duchy to preserve, there is nothing I won’t do to protect my own. So bluster and blubber all you like, viscount, but touch my child at the risk of yours.”

There was a tense moment as Viscount Lance gave her a long glower, before he bowed perfunctorily and stalked out. Felicity released the breath she had been holding, but then the duchess turned her eyes on her.

“Miss Smoak,” she stated, her tone every bit as imperious as their difference in rank allowed her to be.

Felicity executed the best curtsy she could, which did not meet with evident approval from the duchess. She could see the questions arising in the older woman’s eyes, and the knot of apprehension within her grew larger with every second that passed.

“Miss Smoak is my new secretary,” interjected Oliver quickly. “Thank you very much for arriving on time, Miss Smoak. If you would just wait for me in my study...? It’s the first door to the right on the first floor.”

Catching the meaningful glance he directed to her, Felicity stifled the expression of surprise forming on her face and stepped into the corridor. The heavy door closed behind her with a heavy thud.

She winced.

It was clear that she had made a mistake, the exact gravity of which she was unaware. She had thought that the damage was only to fall upon her reputation, an irony considering her private vow, but otherwise of little harm to anyone else. It was not as if anyone expected anything else of the daughter of Donna Smoak, and the Georgian proclivity for indiscretions would have precluded ignominy from falling upon a man like the duke anyway.

But she had the impression that she calculated wrongly. Biting her lip, Felicity removed the straw bonnet she wore and went in search of the duke’s study.

The interior of Starling House was awash in warm shades, despite the popularity of pale, muted palettes in the previous century. While the paneling employed white stucco, the staircase hall was stained with spruce ochre and umber to soften the starkness of it all. Adding to the impression were the bouquets that coupled each family portrait or landscape lining the hallways, each addressed to ‘Lady Thea Queene’.

Her heart sank. He had a sister, or perhaps a ward, and she had not thought of how her appearance at his house and rash words would have affected another woman’s position. But there was nothing to do now but wait for further instructions.

The study itself was appointed in shades of blue, furnished simply with mahogany pieces. Its window looked out onto the street where she had alighted earlier, and she saw that the line of carriages that crowded before Starling House had since left.

Ignoring the hum of unease within her, Felicity sat herself down on one of the Hepplewhite elbow chairs in front of the duke’s desk, her gaze drawn to the bookshelves. The shelves contained dictionaries and two bibles, a plethora of philosophical texts and a few tomes on animal husbandry and estate management. It was her opinion that that these books were not intentionally collected by the current duke.

With only the sound of passing carriages in the background, she was left to her thoughts and the wretched anticipation that always came when one had the niggling suspicion that one had erred. Her hand reached for the account book left open on the corner of the desk closest to her; the sight of symbols quelled her uneasiness immediately.

This had been a constant truth ever since she could read. The other courtesans at the bawdy house her mother had worked at had thought her the strangest creature on account of this trait, snatching her spectacles off her nose whenever they caught her curled up by the window with a book on her lap. After all, nobody wanted to bed a bluestocking who had no charming conversation but a collection of dry facts and verbal blunders whenever she but opened her mouth.

But when Felicity opened a book, regardless of whether it was filled with numbers or letters, she came alive. Each page was a textured trove of treasures she could plunder and pillage to her heart’s content, a multitude of worlds she explored with her mind as her weapon of choice.

A book would never taunt her, or abandon her, and every symbol she wrote was a further rune against a reality she could slip out of. Her mind flew through the accounts, and that was how he found her later, engrossed in tallying the last of the numbers.

“You look positively innocent even as you plan a nefarious scheme to upend the world,” observed someone dryly.

Felicity let the book slip from her hands as she hastily rose from her seat. Standing in the doorframe was Oliver’s valet, peering benignly down at her.

“Mr Diggle!”

 “‘Diggle’ alone is more than adequate, Miss Smoak. I’m glad to see you made it to London safely.”

She bent to pick up the accounts book, offering it to him. “Please, call me ‘Felicity’ as well. I know it may be interpreted as presumptuous, but I worked through the accounts while I was waiting. I promise I will not be able to remember the exact figures by next week, if there are issues of confidentiality.”

Diggle examined the full record, his eyes widening as he discovered the extent of her progress. “I’ve a feeling that his grace will be more likely to kiss you with happiness for your work than be incensed that it was done at all.”

Her responding laugh was half-hearted, because while the quip was funny, she did not want to dwell too deeply on the notion of Oliver kissing her at all, not after she had gone to the trouble of fortifying her heart against him that morning.

“What brings you to Starling House today, Felicity? I notice his grace has not handed you the documents he wished you to look at.”

Diggle was the spirit of amiability, just as she remembered him, and it was as if the imposition of human warmth in the formal trappings of Starling House was the cue her regrets needed to well up in her throat. Everything she had carried since her escape from Slade Wilson spilled out then, ending with her confession that she had slipped up with regard to Oliver’s charge of murder.

All this while Diggle listened patiently, nodding where appropriate. As she ended her confession on “I saw that he was in danger, and I just acted”, he gave her a kind smile, meant to reassure her.

“You aren’t entirely wrong about the situation. His grace, being a peer, can only be tried in the House of Lords, and it is doubtful that her grace would have allowed it to pass, by wielding her influence on the wives and mothers of other peers. This is assuming that said other peers were even willing to try the case to begin with – it is a strange brand of justice that they reserve for one of their own.”

She nodded jerkily once, twice. “Oh.”

“That being said, your intervention should not be discounted. In choosing to speak up, you’ve demonstrated that you have courage to do what you believe to be right. And his grace will be further gratified to note the other thing you’ve proven.”

Felicity raised her head, wondering what he meant.

“His grace is not alone. Not with you there to defend him, whether in the interests of justice or not.”

She had no book to shield her, no complicated words or numbers to render her mistakes less obvious to all. But Felicity felt neither shame nor fear, and she could mean the sentiment with all her heart as she quipped, “ _Fiat justitia ruat caelum_.”

Diggle let out a small laugh. “I should probably admit now that the only Latin I have is ‘ _Fortes fortuna adiuvat_ ’.”

“A valet with Latin and healing skills… you’re no mere valet, are you?”

Another of Felicity’s long-held suspicions were confirmed as Diggle shook his head, lifting a finger to his lips. She opened her mouth to ask more questions, but Oliver returned then. 

* * *

It was a perfect day to do so.

It had to be, because otherwise Tommy was about to expire from the anxiety plaguing him. He paced the floor outside Viscount Lance’s study, trying his best to ignore the judging looks of the Lance House butler as he fingered the rubies in his pocket.

He was going to confess all today.

The decision had been made last night, following his unfruitful trip to Starling House for Oliver’s birthday party. As one of his previous mistresses sauntered towards him, the invitation in her sultry gaze clear for all to see, Tommy knew with a bone certainty that it was time to let go of his pride and the string of meaningless flings meant to hide said pride.

How long he had lived this merry life! The games of seduction had been his only pursuit while he sought to obscure his love for Laurel, and he was weary of pretending that he never felt more than friendship, as he was weary of each miserable instance where his imagination raised his hopes just so reality could dash them down again.

This very pattern had arisen during their departure from Bristol. Following the conversation he had with Laurel in the catacombs below Canary Court, he had allowed himself to hope, and was waiting for the opportunity when he could announce to the world the fulfillment of his dreams. That impression quickly fell away, when they entered a public house for rest and she had only rolled her eyes at him when he was bombarded by female attention.

He wanted to see her face harden with jealousy, just for once, on his account. He wanted to know that she saw him as more than her childhood friend, or, God forbid, a brother. But he also knew that such expectations were unfair on her, not if he had never dared to tell her of his feelings and how he would always be foolish for her sake.

The heavy sound of footsteps raised his anxiety, and he touched the knot at his neck self-consciously as he prepared to meet the man he wished as his father-in-law.

One look at Viscount Lance’s face indicated that this was a most inopportune time to be broaching the topic. His was a face made for scowling, and the older man was certainly employing his God-given gifts to full effect now.

“Lord Lance!” sputtered Tommy, steeling himself for the conversation that was to follow.

“What?” the other man said irately. “What the devil are you doing here?”

“My lord, I was hoping to speak to you on a matter of grave importance.” He directed a look at the butler, and the viscount waved him away.

“Inform me when my daughter returns from church, Hilton,” called Viscount Lance, as he entered his study and tossed his hat aside carelessly.

Tommy stood before the desk with his gloved hands clasped nervously behind him, watching the viscount toss back two glasses of whisky.

“Merlyn,” said the viscount, after his third drink.

“Yes, my lord?”

“Did you intend to dither about in my study or speak?”

Nodding vigorously, Tommy began, “I came to pursue a suit. That is to say, it would be an inestimable honour and my fondest wish were you to consent to be my – “

He broke off, biting his tongue before he could continue. That was not quite the way one should ask a man for permission to marry his daughter.

Viscount Lance furrowed his brow as he poured out another drink and raised the bottle to eye level to carefully inspect how much he had left. “I can’t hear what you’re mumbling, boy. Speak up.”

Tommy took a deep breath, placing his hand into his coat pocket and touching the rubies to remind him of his purpose. “My lord, I have come to ask your permission for a privilege.”

Never one for formalities or niceties, the viscount put his glass away and finally gave him his full attention. “What do you want?”

The door behind them opened and Laurel’s angry voice was heard.

“Father, I cannot believe that you went to Starling House and kicked up a fuss this morning!” She stopped as her eyes fell on Tommy’s form, taking in his finery. “Tommy. I didn’t see you at church this morning – it’s not like you to put your Sunday best on.”

It was all he could do not to put a hand to the bridge of his nose in exasperation as he bowed in greeting. Laurel approached the desk boldly, addressing her father. “As I was saying, your antagonism towards Ollie cannot create conflict between the Queenes and us. The duchess and Lady Thea are innocent of what has happened.”

The viscount was not fond of being criticised, and even less so before a stranger. “No damage has been done – the duke produced another one of his women as an alibi, some Smoak woman. Why are you even defending the blackguard? I went to Starling House because I had reason to believe that that the duke is responsible for the murders that happened last night.” He rifled through the sheaves of papers on his desk, and produced one of them. “This is a drawing of the murder weapon used - every one of the eight men that died last night were tortured and killed with an arrow that looked like this. I drew the connection, for his status as a Corinthian stems from his prowess with a bow, and he has an associate known as the Arrow.”

Laurel’s face grew white as she inspected it, her eyes quickly taking in the details written by the side. Tommy bent over the drawing as well, his memory of the carnage he had witnessed in Bristol coming to the forefront of his mind.

“You know something I don’t,” observed the viscount, as he took back the drawing from his daughter and set it back down on the desk slowly.

Laurel tossed her head lightly as she looked her father in the eye. “The Oliver I know would never kill a person. I was just shocked at your description, that’s all.”

It was a crafty answer; Tommy too did not recognise the man who had viciously defended her in the slums of Bristol, even though he resembled the childhood companion of his youth. As he watched the viscount study Laurel’s countenance, his own dismay manifested strongly.

Hilton arrived then, bearing a note for the young lady of the house.

“Her grace requests my presence at Starling House,” Laurel explained, upon reading the note. “I’ll take the carriage and make sure no lasting damage has been done to our families’ relationship.”

Without waiting for her father’s acknowledgment of her announcement, she walked confidently away, and Tommy’s heart sank with every step she took.

He had seen that expression on her face before. It was the one she had made when she had first learnt of Oliver’s absconding with her sister, as well as the one she had made when she had first discovered Oliver and Sara in Bristol. It was her mask whenever Oliver caused her concern, and Tommy knew without a doubt then that she still felt something for his best friend.

“So what is it you want, Merlyn?” asked the viscount irascibly.

Tommy smiled, and removed his hand from his pocket, placing it on the desk between them. “My father recently closed his factory in East End and signed it over for me to do as I wish with it. I understand that Miss Lance has been looking for a location to open an orphanage, and was wondering if it would be possible to arrange for it to be placed in trust for her, just so we can avoid the scandal of my publicly bestowing land on an unmarried woman…” 

* * *

Laurel was more than familiar with the layout of Starling House, but she fancied that there was something different about it even as she entered. It was the silence, which spoke not of peace but of more insidious things festering and simmering under a surface of quiet.

She was led to the drawing room, where the Duchess of Starling awaited. Moira was dressed to receive visitors, armed with the paraphernalia of tea, cakes and knitting every shrewd woman wielded.

“Laurel,” the duchess smiled, rising from her seat. “How kind of you to come.”

She had never addressed Laurel by her first name before, gracious as she was over the years. Laurel took her seat cautiously, wondering at the reason for her summons.

“I trust you have heard of the little discussion your father conducted here at noon,” said the duchess, pouring out the tea gracefully.

Laurel nodded, waiting for the right moment to apologise.

“We were very gratified to know of your father’s thought to share his findings with us at his firs convenience. Nevertheless, it has not escaped my attention that some people in the _ton_ may seek to use this as an opportunity to malign our families.”

The duchess waited for Laurel to sip at the cup she had offered before she continued.

“I’ll speak frankly with you, Laurel, seeing how you are a woman of understanding. My priority is to protect my daughter, and my son has shown that he will not budge on his…recent hiring decision, which concerns a woman of questionable background. I hope you will be willing to lend me your support in standing by Thea, perhaps at the Wests’ soirée tomorrow evening.”

It took some time before she could find the right words of reply, particularly when her strong suspicions that her father was indeed right about Oliver’s propensity to kill were still floating about her mind, as well as the host of unarticulated thoughts she had about Oliver’s appearance in Bristol. “I would be honoured to help, your grace, but I wish to clarify the nature of my help before I run the risk of disappointing you by acceding to your request.”

“Two dances. I believe that will be enough to distract the _ton_ for now, though I have always harboured hopes for more. This can be arranged, by way of an announcement made at a suitable time, for while an offer once refused is no longer on the table, I am happy to remake the same offer now in place of my son. After all, I have always thought that you would be my ideal replacement, once you gave up on your childish notion that _ton_ marriages are meant to be anything more than civil.”

Five years ago Laurel would have leapt for joy at the approval shown by the duchess. It was all she could do now to keep the polite mask on her face. “I’m afraid I must regretfully decline, your grace. But I will keep the two places on my dance card free, as you’ve requested.”

Moira sniffed. “You disappoint me, girl. Surely you can see what you are turning down is not limited to the entry in _Debrett’s_ as duchess, and the privilege of being addressed as ‘your grace’? My position comes with the clout necessary to react when our men believe that they act with impunity, for where the law of the land favours the men, it is in the rules and conventions governing our society where we women exert our power.

“You are a compassionate woman, Laurel, and I expected the do-gooder in you to look beyond your selfish emotions about Oliver’s past penchant for indiscretions – within reason, of course, we can’t have immorality being flaunted about – and to grasp the influence which would allow you to save others. Your sister, for one, would certainly be welcomed in the _ton_ if she is sister-in-law to a duke, past history aside. Would you choose folly and so forsake her?”

At the mention of Sara, Laurel rose to her feet. She did know what she was turning down; she had had five years to ruminate on that, and the recent events in her life had brought her to the realisation that she did not, in fact, want to be Oliver’s duchess.

She never had, because what she wanted all along did not translate to reality well as becoming his duchess in truth.

“With respect, your grace, I have not turned down anything but the prospect of a broken heart. You have severely misjudged me, if you believe that I have mastered the art of – of sorting myself into a chest of drawers, with different keys for different people. It’s always been all or nothing for me, and I cannot sign my body away without my heart in tow.

“You raised your son’s past indiscretions, mostly committed while he was still beholden to me. I find cannot marry a man who would love himself more than he loved me, who would satisfy his needs elsewhere in spite of my feelings. I will not let anyone diminish me, and such a husband will carelessly spend my soul and spirit away if I were to even let him at me.”

Moira raised a hand to hide her mouth as she chortled. “It is the way of the _ton_ , Laurel, and I offer you this advice out of kindness now. You speak of love in marriage, which is the sole province of poetry and novels. I was once like you, you know. Young, and foolishly in love with my husband when I first married the last duke. You’ll find that your dreams will quickly sap away, as the throes of calf-love fail to last and that it was far more practical to acquire what you can actually keep.”

“Forgive me then, your grace, if from the outset I do not give what I cannot afford to lose.”

Laurel curtseyed and left for the entrance hall, where she found Oliver speaking to his valet and an unknown woman wearing sprigged muslin and spectacles.

 _The Smoak woman_ , she recalled her father’s words, and she could see something of the courtesan she had met in Bristol in the clear blue of the young woman’s eyes and the intense rose of her mouth.

The party of three looked up in surprise at Laurel’s approach.

“I was just leaving, Ollie,” she said, not in the mood for exchanging pleasantries, particularly with him, following all that had happened. “Your mother says that we will have to give the _ton_ two dances during tomorrow’s soirée so as to preserve the illusion of our families’ unity. Do let me know what you want by tomorrow so I can pencil you into my dance card.”

The man that she had once sought to marry, in the height of her youth and folly, glanced sharply at her and then at the woman by his side, as if contemplating whether to perform introductions. As she saw him now she could not believe that there was once a time in her life when the sun rose and set on his favour; the shadow on his jaw and the controlled way he moved was so alien to her that even as he was no longer the Ollie she had loved and no longer could love, she was uncertain of who this man known as the Duke of Starling was.

This man was a killer, she reminded herself, though she would not press the issue until more information was released.

“You must be Miss Laurel Lance, right? That Laurel…gorgeous Laurel…” began the woman, before she closed her mouth and cringed, muttering, “I did not mean to say all of that out loud…”

Laurel was unaware of how best to react, and she tried very hard to maintain the polite façade she showed when people misspoke before her so as not to draw attention to the faux pas Oliver’s companion had made.

“Laurel, this is my secretary, Miss Smoak,” said Oliver, and Laurel inferred that this was the woman whom the duchess spoke of earlier. She acknowledged her presence with a nod, and indicated with her reserve that she wished to return at haste to Lance House.

The air as she stepped onto the pavement outside was materially no different from what it had been when she had first entered Starling House, but she reckoned she smelt the whiff of possibilities. The girl that had loved Ollie and what she thought he could be had fully grown up, and Laurel Lance was ready to move forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we jump all over Moira for trying to make Lauriver happen (that Mean Girls meme comes to mind as I type this), let's understand why she would do so. The ton is obsessed with the starcrossed romance between the Queenes and Lances, as seen from the scandal sheets excerpted in this work. Laurel is the daughter of a viscount (fortune is not really an issue if the girl hails from a suitable bloodline) and Moira thought she had the mettle to take over as HBIC, not to mention Quentin would be controlled effectively if ruining the Queenes meant ruining his own daughter as well. It thus makes perfect sense to distract the ton from the charge of murder (assuming it spreads, but let's be realistic, it's London and everyone saw the carriages outside Starling House) and Felicity's addition to the household with a wedding that puts right the broken engagement from before. I myself am grateful that my Laurel does not actually consider this in the story unlike what happened for one episode in Season One.
> 
> Someone asked why Merlance has not been resolved after Chapter 16 - I hope this answers your question. Tommy has yet to tell Laurel what he feels and a part of me feels very satisfied for how evil I'm being in bringing them two steps back on his part when Laurel takes the step forward to shake off her Oliver hangover in this chapter. For clarification, she was upset when Quentin told her because she suspected that Oliver really did kill the men, but she wasn't about to tell her father about her Bristol jaunt just like that. But now that Laurel has chosen to give up Oliver she will be more amenable to alternatives, so we can continue cheering Tommy on.
> 
> Like many Georgian nobles Quentin drinks a lot, a hark to his alcoholic past. I had a lot of fun writing Tommy's abortive attempt to ask Quentin for permission to marry Laurel, which was the practice then. Like Tommy I dithered about whether to give him an abandoned factory because that is Oliver's thing on the show, but I thought it would be great to show him managing the conversion of such to other uses as a homage to his brief stint as Oliver's manager in Season One. Property tended to be put in a trust for a woman's benefit at this point in time, as opposed to being transferred directly to her. It would be fairly scandalous should people realise that Tommy made a gift of his land to Laurel despite their lack of formal association, especially since unmarried women were not supposed to accept gifts from men, which is why it is quite appropriate for him to approach Quentin about how best to legally arrange it.
> 
> I love writing Moira - there are 2000 words that didn't make it into this chapter where she tells Oliver off for his proposed solution to the scandal problem that she tries to solve in the last part of this chapter (spent two days refining that, which is why it took me so long to update), but all in all I love how she wields her authority to secure her interests. I took particularly long to solve the problem myself while planning this chapter because as I've said before Felicity does not fit easily into a stock character in the historical romances I've read and so I have to research extensively each time her actions have social ramifications. Affairs were very common during the 18th century though it was understood that one had to be discreet, which is why Victorian morality can be seen as a overreaction to the sexual revolution of their grandfathers.
> 
> Diggle's response to Felicity is 'fortune favours the brave', while her first phrase is 'let the heavens fall though justice be done'. All mistakes are mine because I have no Latin, and I hope that this interaction between them is adequate homage to their dynamic on the show!


	21. Hearsay

By evening, all of London was in the know.

Not the explicit details of the viscount’s visit to Starling House – explained away as an entreaty for the young duke to take his seat in Parliament – but of those concerning the slew of bodies left to rot in Hyde Park on May the Sixteenth.

After leaving Starling House at the first opportunity he had, Oliver had headed straight for St James’ Street to open his gaming hell two hours early. All members were permitted play any game with no limits on their credit during the additional opening hours, his way of compensating for Verdant’s premature closing the night before. The sanctity of the Sabbath was no preclusion to the _ton_ ’s predilection for pleasure, though amidst roister and revel floated the grisly details of the Hyde Park murders, a fascinating topic not for the faint at heart.

Bow Street had discovered a ninth body at suppertime, half-submerged in a bush lining the edges of the Serpentine. Like all the others it was pierced by a single arrow to the breast, though various other injuries too inflicted by arrowheads were found marking its bloated flesh. It was said that the runners thought the murders merely the product of madness, until a subsequent inquest revealed that each corpse bore three messages wrapped in a sheep’s bladder inserted into the corpse’s crudely sewn-up gut.

The first: _Vengeance is mine; I will repay_.

The second: _The sins of the father will be visited upon the son_.

And the last: _I say not unto thee, until seven times: but, until seventy times seven._

The second of those had been hissed into his ear in the seconds following his stabbing at the Theatre Royal, and this produced within him a renewed urgency to find the man known as Stellmoor. Moreover, Oliver could not shake off the feeling that the present murders had to do with his father, inasmuch as it was evident that they were linked to him as well. The best way to flush out information in London was to listen carefully to idle talk, and so he walked amongst the dissipation in the card rooms of Verdant now, eavesdropping on what snippets of conversations he could.

A woman dressed in a deep purple gown of satin spotted him, and she rose from one of the tables to approach his side, a coquettish smile playing about her lips and the exotic tilt of her eyes.

“I hear you’ve taken in Donna’s daughter,” said McKenna Hall, proprietress and madam of the Fields of Fancy, the establishment partnered with Verdant for each evening’s entertainments. The present evening’s success went beyond her allowing her girls to provide sparkling conversation and the pleasure of their company – she had loaned her cook as well.

“Miss Smoak is my secretary,” repeated Oliver, for perhaps the umpteenth time that evening, given how passing members had seen fit to pelt him with incessant questions about his decision to hire a woman, and of such a background at that, for the position. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

The madam laughed, her tortoiseshell fan raised to cover her mouth. “Most definitely, your grace. I’ve met the girl before, while her mother was still in my line of business, and when I was just starting out. Never have I met a more unlikely candidate for a man’s kept woman than in the person of Felicity Smoak. Rest assured that I will be confirming as such that she is no Cyprian in your home.”

He was prompted by some impulse to argue, but could think of nothing other than to reiterate his previous words, or to demand why Felicity’s obvious desirability prevented anyone from denying himself the honour of having her devotion. Perhaps it was for the better, for it did Felicity’s reputation no credit for the Duke of Starling to overreact to any aspersions cast upon her virtue.

“Have any of your girls ever met a man known as ‘Stellmoor’?” he asked instead.

McKenna folded her fan and rested it on her left cheek. “You know I never kiss and tell, your grace.”

“For old time’s sake, McKenna,” urged Oliver, giving her the lopsided smile she had so favoured when he first met her six years ago and he was a green boy about to keep his first mistress.

“Very well,” she conceded. “On account of our history, I’ll ask the _demi-monde_.”

“I would have thought it was on account of the jewels.”

She touched a hand to the amethysts that adorned the graceful column of her neck, his parting gift to her after all was said and finished between them in an amicable last meeting as patron and courtesan. “They were most persuasive in my decision-making process.”

Having accomplished his goal in seeking her out, Oliver left the room by way of a private flight of stairs that led up to the owner’s suite above. As he pressed his hand to the bannister, the layer of dust that had gathered on its smooth surface clung to his palm, and he made a mental note to find some time to clean the secret tunnels in his gaming hell sometime that week.

Diggle was waiting in the observation room, seated in the new armchair that Oliver had ordered be placed there by the building’s architects. His chin rested in his palm, and his eyes were trained on the activity below, the other hand occasionally picking up a quill that was to his side to scribble some notes down in an open file.

“I’ve put Roy on investigating the Hyde Park murders,” said Oliver, crossing the room to join him. “I would prefer you look for information on my father’s service for the Crown; I can’t see Anatoli until all suspicions are off my person.”

Diggle turned to look at him, straightening in his seat to a more upright position. Oliver could see that the man was hesitant from the way his tongue darted out to lick his lips before he said, “I need to tell you that I made contact with the War Office on Saturday. They know you’re the Arrow, Oliver.”

Oliver had been in the midst of removing the stifling layer of his coat, and he froze now, the garment hanging loosely in his hands. “And where have you chosen to place your loyalties?”

“I only have to make a report when your actions threaten Britain’s interests. In fact they ordered me back to Starling House this afternoon only to confirm that you weren’t responsible for the Hyde Park murders.”

Placing his coat on the arm of his chair, Oliver tugged at the knot around his neck. “I’ve killed before.”

“As have I. I would like to think I know the difference between a man who kills in defense and a man who kills for sport. You are not the latter, Oliver, not when you fall into a contemplative mood each time you take a life.”

Oliver acknowledged his support with a single nod, stripping off his waistcoat so that he stood only in his shirtsleeves and breeches. It was a strange thing to be idle at present, but he had put someone on every single live lead he had, and in light of his extreme reluctance to return to Starling House the only thing left to do was to wait for time to pass.

He strode over to the sideboard, and retrieved the bottle of vodka that Anatoli had sent to him when he first sought out Felicity’s identity. Pouring out two glasses, he handed one of them to Diggle, who accepted it.

“ _Prochnost_ ,” said Oliver, raising his glass.

“I’ve really no idea why you two can’t just speak English,” replied the other man, too raising his glass.

Oliver did not quite understand the reference but tipped the contents of his glass down his throat, feeling the burn of the alcohol sweep through his body. He sat next to Diggle, who too finished his drink and placed the glass on the ground, to resume his watch on the activity below through the verdurous crystal Oliver had insisted be installed.

“Roy tells me that the horse you rode in on is new.”

Oliver vaguely recalled the beast and its glossy black flank. “Indeed?”

“He’s named Devil, and sired from the famous Ducati that won the Ascot twice. Roy says he was a birthday present sent by Lord Thomas Merlyn.”

Oliver bit back a sigh. He had a conversation with Tommy that was long overdue, one that he did not wish to have in the slightest. The last time they had spoken was in Bristol, where not even the most perfunctory of greetings had been exchanged, unless one counted the well-deserved charge of being a lying bastard his best friend had leveled at him.

There was also Laurel to contend with. Oliver did not look forward to his dances with her for tomorrow’s soirée, those planned minutes of prolonged contact where he would have to look into her green eyes with the knowledge that she was fully cognisant of his guilt. At last she was aware that he was guilty of lying, of killing and of harbouring a vicious monster within him that was capable of untold violence, which he had perpetrated right before her eyes.

After all that was said and done between them, it was still a touch too close to his recurring nightmares wherein she pointed an accusing finger at him. The irreparability of their relationship was a given, and he should have felt empty and devoid of hope, but instead it was a bone-weariness that suffused his mind.

There was too much between them to return to a more innocent time, only the darkness and exhaustion endowed by experience.

Oliver finally let out the breath he had been suppressing, turning his attention to the glint of his signet ring. “We’ll need to return to Starling House tonight.”

“I thought you moved into the suite here?”

“I promised my mother I’d move back when negotiating for Felicity’s living arrangements.”

Diggle stood up, understanding in his dark gaze. “So what is her status in the household?”

“Equivalent to that of a governess. Mother’s threatened to exclude her from formal dinners but I’ll chip away at that position when we do indeed need to take dinner with guests.”

As Oliver rose to his feet, putting his coat and waistcoat back on, he heard Diggle mutter, “Thanks for the invitation.”

Oliver stopped and looked his partner in the eye, his next words entirely sincere. “I don’t believe in strictures of the world I was born in, not after what I’ve been through. Believe me when I say that there is no other man I would have eat by my side as my equal, John.”

The man gave him a small smile, extending a hand to him as one would an equal. “And there is no other living man that I would consider more of a brother.”

 _Perhaps there was some good in the life he was leading now, after all._ That was at the forefront of Oliver’s mind as he crossed the threshold into the entrance hall of Starling House by himself, Diggle having entered the house through the servants’ door at the back. He had lost himself, his father, his ability to simply return to his previous life, but he was not alone, inasmuch as he still drowned in his misery. For the past months his only consistent wish was that the cup he had been given be passed from him; the impossibility of that wish was sufficient grounds for him to now be resigned to living with the weight of his past.

A sliver of light creeping across the tiled floor caught his attention and he followed its path in search of its source. As he threw open the library door, he made out Felicity’s form curled up in a large armchair before the dying embers of the fire.

She did not notice his entrance, and so for the first time since he met her, he allowed himself to drink her in.

The dim glow of the cinders produced a peachy tint on the milky hues of her skin. Felicity wore yet another of his nightshirts, her garments only scheduled to arrive the next day, and the fabric overwhelmed her person, pooling about her limbs much in the manner he had noticed when he awoke that morning to find her by his side. Her golden hair was secured loosely in a braid resting on her shoulder, and she appeared to be thoroughly engrossed in collection of papers, a simper of amusement occasionally appearing across her features.

She was part of the reason why he had been keen to avoid Starling House. It had not escaped him that attraction, potent and perilous, simmered between them each time they but entered each other’s presence, and when he opened his eyes that morning he felt it was necessary to be honest with himself.

Felicity Smoak was forbidden. No matter how irresistible he found her form or her mind, there would no longer be flirting or teasing, no suggestions of something more than friendship between them. He had been most tempted ever since he met her in Slade’s house, but following their night together he knew that it could not pass.

More than anyone else he had met in his life did Felicity Smoak radiate an unadulterated goodness and decency, unsullied by the circumstances which she was plunged into. He had seen as much when she bargained for her mother’s life and wellbeing over her own, when she had approached him in the fit of his worst nightmares, and when she had willingly given up all claims of her own respectability as proof of his innocence.

He needed her to avenge his father, but exigencies aside, there was no doubt that he would taint her with all the darkness within him were he to even touch her.

She stirred, the orange light shifting across her lovely features as she tilted her head towards the doorway. A wide smile broke out on her face as her eyes lit with recognition.

“Oliver! Welcome home,” she said, making to rise, as decorum required of her.

“There’s no need to get up,” said Oliver, striding over to where she sat. “What were you reading?”

She thrust the papers under a fold of the nightdress she was wearing, which was not inherently difficult, given the amount of silk draping over her frame. “Nothing in particular.”

They held each other’s gaze for a while, neither of them willing to give in with respect to his inquiry, while she clamped her papers securely against her lap. Finally Oliver narrowed his eyes and curled a hand around the seat of her chair’s wooden frame.

“What are you  – ” she began to yelp in alarm, throwing out a hand towards his forearm to restrain him, but he had already dragged the chair and her in it over to the other armchair positioned before the fireplace, falling into it to put them at the same eye level as he did so.

Without thinking, he reached his other hand towards where she had sought to conceal the papers, and they both froze as he felt the warmth of her thigh through the silk she wore with his fingertips.

Oliver withdrew his fingers immediately, but his eyes were still locked onto hers, neither of them quite able to speak. His heart was pounding as if he had ridden hard at length before he saw her, its loud sound drowning any opportunity for rational thought in his mind, although all that had transpired before this was a gentle trot back to Grovesnor Square and Roy’s telling him that the coroner who had dealt with the Hyde Park bodies had been identified.

A flush was appearing on her cheeks, and he was painfully aware of the sweet honeysuckle scent she emitted, as well as the fact that the measurements of the neck opening on his nightshirt meant that he could see the beginnings of her left breast and the deep shadow next to its swell.

Oliver tried to focus his mind on her spectacles, but at present he found that there was something unbearably erotic about them as well, in the way they kissed the bridge of her nose and framed the cloudless sky her eyes were. He could not bring himself to move, and yet he needed to adjust his seat, so that she would not notice the effect she had on him. He prayed that he had ordered conservative bed jackets and bed shifts when he had put in the request for her wardrobe.

“…scandal sheets,” she finally choked out, offering the papers to him in surrender. “My mother’s associate sent me some old scandal sheets when she heard that I was working here.”

He took them from her and recognised their subject matter immediately. “They’re not all true,” he said, thumbing through a rather thorough account of all his appearances as a young and debonair rake in London.

“Some are rather accurate – this one, for instance.” She referred to a more recent sheet, which concerned Tommy’s and his appearance at a respectable event, in the words of the report, ‘almost a rarer occasion than the joint appearance of Prinny and his wife in public’. The event in question was a musicale put on by the eldest Lance sister, and Laurel had been alluded to with the sobriquet she had held for most of her first Season: ‘Gorgeous Laurel’.

“I’ve read that one before, before I met you, and when I saw Miss Lance this afternoon, I thought the epithet indeed rang true.”

“Laurel was born to be admired,” acknowledged Oliver. “But I rather think that it’s in surpassing what is dictated by the circumstances of our birth that we truly begin to be.”

That sentiment applied to the both of them, to her triumph and to his despair.

The embers died and what little illumination they had provided ebbed away, he only glimpsed the rueful smile she gave in response before she said quietly, “It’s late now. I should return to my room.”

He insisted on walking her up the stairs to the second floor where the room designated for the governess was, next to the empty nursery Moira allowed their butler and housekeeper to use as a servant’s parlour of sorts, over and above the servants’ hall in the basement where staff ate. She turned the knob and then paused, her head raised to look straight ahead at the door.

“I know what the _ton_ will say about me and my being here,” Felicity said, breaking the contemplative silence that had fallen over their ascent to the second floor. “I am most grateful for your generosity in ensuring that I enjoy a status and position that another man would never have extended to someone of my ilk.”

Words of protest were swelling up in his throat, ones to assure her that she had less than what she deserved, particularly given that he would not have her eat with the servants even though Moira sought to exclude her from their table, which placed her in a limbo of rank and status.

“Truth be told, I expected the cover story to be my being your mistress, particularly after the most impetuous statement I made in your parlour this afternoon. I know you will be defending our cover story to your fellow peers and I want you to be assured that I stand entirely with you in my expectations regarding this arrangement.”

He had been staring at the way she held her shoulders tensely throughout her speech, her back to him as she hovered at the threshold of the simply-furnished room she had been given. Felicity turned to face him now, her earnestness and conviction underscoring the gravity of her tone.

“I am not a woman given to flights of fancy, but when I was in the first blush of youth, I…became acquainted with a gentleman whom I thought would marry me despite my birth. Suffice to say he persuaded me to see the error of my judgment, and I will not make the same mistake in respect of the relationship between us.”

Oliver wanted to kill this man of whom she spoke, who had shattered her dreams and engendered the cynical edge to her words now. Her eyes had been downcast when she alluded to her past but then Felicity’s expression softened somewhat, and she raised her gaze to meet his again.

“I will be your employee, your helpmate and your ally, and because I have vowed to never become a man’s mistress, it does not matter what story we eventually need to tell the _ton_. I will not misunderstand my station and what it entails.”

His mind was in a whirl; he did not hear if she bade him good night. The door closed behind her, leaving Oliver to wonder why his surrender to the irreversibility of his circumstances had suddenly met with bitter pricks of unhappiness.

* * *

 It was with great reluctance that Tommy shuffled into Merlyn House, tendrils of fog still clinging to his coat. The rays of dawn were about to make their entrance; he had forced himself to stay up and out for the last few hours, forcing a chuckle as opposed at every ribald joke made by the fast younger set he had joined for the night’s activities.

Perhaps he was just too old to carouse till dawn, downing alcohol of varying levels of quality and hopping from vice to vice as if the whole endeavour was worth the effort. Or perhaps he could no longer see any meaning in pretending his merriment in life.

There was talk about the Hyde Park murders all through the evening. A further subject of interest was the person that Oliver had reportedly hired. It distressed Tommy to hear the news of Oliver’s secretary circulating; the topic was bound to find its way to Laurel’s ear, and she had never before taken news of Oliver’s women well.

There was one idiot who had dared ask Tommy about the appearance of runners at Starling House at midday, a Carter Bowen from his Eton days. Tommy had always remembered Bowen as a most pompous ass who believed that being nephew to a duke and heir presumptive to said dukedom elevated him even above the other boys in the house – barring Oliver, of course.

“My uncle says that there’s more than what has been said about the visit from Bow Street – he mentioned that the duke has never been involved with such operations.”

Tommy gave the man a tight-lipped smile and wondered why he had even fallen into his company that night to begin with.

“The Duke of Starling was known for his archery all through school, and to be honest, I think everyone can agree that there’s been something almost savage about the man ever since he returned to London. Wouldn’t you agree that the duke may have been the subject of investigation?”

It was slightly more direct than insinuation, that favoured weapon of the _beau monde_. Tommy gave a chuckle and looked intently at the other man, asking, “Mr Bowen, are you suggesting that the duke is a killer responsible for the Hyde Park murders?”

Carter Bowen was not quite that plucky, nor devoid of sense. “Not at all, Lord Thomas.”

“Good. That would have been a most grave insult upon his grace’s honour indeed, and I would have hated to ruin the evening by calling someone out.”

Bowen had laughed nervously. “No one could doubt the loyalty of the Merry Merlyn to his friend…”

Tommy ran a hand through his hair now, his heart heavy. There was no question of being disloyal to Oliver in public but even though he intuited that Oliver was not responsible for the recent spate of deaths, the carnage from Bristol nevertheless weighed his judgment the other way.

He had been entirely shocked when he saw the bodies in that narrow alleyway, his disgust at the gore only waylaid by the overwhelming relief he felt from the fact of Laurel’s safety. He had not wanted to dwell upon that moment but the talk surrounding the Hyde Park murders forced him to relive the sight of gaping wounds and the acrid smell of blood in the air.

All in all Tommy recognised that Oliver had acted on impulse to effect Laurel’s safety. He could be grateful that she was not violated, that despite the lies that Oliver had told everyone regarding his five years away, that whatever the man he had become was, that man was able to save Laurel.

Whereas Tommy did not have it in him to knowingly kill anyone pre-emptively, not even for Laurel’s sake. It was too ingrained in him to consider such actions wrong, and therefore entirely immaterial that had the offer come, he would gladly volunteer to take on any and all of the hurts that fate decreed she had to suffer in her lifetime.

He made a small smile at the thought of Laurel. What folly he had nearly embarked on this afternoon, by thinking to propose! He acknowledged he owed her the truth about his heart, that his secrecy was now only prolonged by his pride and not her sake, but he was also convinced of the destructive impact of his telling her he loved her.

Laurel had always loved Oliver. Laurel hated prevarication. So Laurel was not likely to take kindly to the news that Tommy had loved her this whole while, and Tommy was going to finally learn how fragile his relationship with her really was.

 _There was the possibility Laurel did not yet love this Oliver_ , he pointed out to himself though he did not much believe it, as he passed his father’s study on the first floor. The buzz of voices engaged in conversation could be heard through its mahogany door, and Tommy did not give much thought to the snatches he could hear – his father had always held meetings at odd hours on account of his dealings with the East India Company and the tight schedules governing the passage of trading ships into the Pool of London down at Billingsgate.

He ignored the muffled sound of “…has become aware of our involvement in…” and nearly reached his room when his father’s disapproving tones resounded from behind him.

“What have you done, Thomas?”

The use of his first name in full meant that it was a particular egregious breach of which his father spoke, but apart from that Tommy had no clue as to the subject of his father’s ire.

“Perhaps you’d prefer to enlighten me on how I have disappointed you again.”

Malcolm did not find that remark amusing, his nostrils flaring in anger. “Jokes again. No gravity for the Merry Merlyn, or whatever the imbecilic moniker you acquired at Oxford was. Very well, Tommy, explain how is it you have managed to lose the one property that I bequeathed to your management.”

His family solicitor was most treacherous, not to mention short-sighted in preferring the interests of the older earl to that of the future earl. Tommy gave his father a wide loopy grin that he was sure would annoy him. “I’ve not lost it, father. I’ve merely put it to better use.”

“Is that what you call the asinine scheme you have hatched with Viscount Lance’s daughter? I said to resuscitate its operations after closing it down temporarily, not convert it into some parish poorhouse promising board and lodging to just any street urchin who has a sob story to tell!”

Whenever the earl became angry, he stood stiffly, his head slightly jutting forward with every denigration he pronounced. Tommy tried very hard not to mimic his father in jest, a habit from his younger days, as he replied measuredly, “There are plans for a school and a basic clinic. I further requested that the orphanage be named in honour of mother, since I believe that she would have approved of the cause.”

Malcolm returned his words with the contemptuous sneer Tommy was well familiar with. “Of course your mother would have approved. I forget sometimes how much of Rebecca’s son you are. Have you forgotten how she was murdered, during the Terror in ninety-three?”

How could he, when the tale emerged each time father and son had a disagreement?

“She insisted on letting the riffraff into our home, even though I said it was too dangerous – some piffle about them only wishing to feed the hungry mouths in their home. And so she opened our doors, the bread she prepared readied in a room behind her, waiting for grubby hands to only reach for them.

“The _sans-culottes_ took one look at the string of pearls around her neck and shot her for them. I watched them kill my wife, because I was too weak to protect her, and because she was weak to their demands. And now you dare tell me you’re making the same mistake as she did in your life – being damnably susceptible to the same sort of weakness she was!”

Tommy was too tired to properly argue with the father whohad refused to allow him to return from school during summer, who had dismissed his nanny on the mere pretext that he was too attached to her, and who had shot his dog when he was fourteen on the basis that a man of his ilk should not be keeping a three-legged animal.

“Father, I would prefer to continue this conversation at breakfast,” he said, making plans right there and then not to turn up for breakfast.

The earl made a sound of exasperation. “Why do you always do this, Tommy? Why do you always make me the unreasonable one? Do you think it was easy for me to know that you grew up without a mother because of my work? All I’ve done is to try and cultivate the softness out of you – the same softness that took your mother from us, so that you never have to watch your wife be hurt before your eyes. And yet the only rewards for all my effort are your perennial absences from home, rumours about whatever new stupid thing you have done, and now this! Are you trying to punish me? Why can't you just be sensible for once, instead of engaging in this sort of tomfoolery clearly designed to vex me?”

Tommy shook his head, bereft of words. In some perverse sense his father was right; he had nearly had to witness Laurel in peril when they were in Bristol. He opened his mouth to speak, but his father continued.

“I’ve decided to be less indulgent as a parent. As of tomorrow I am cutting off your allowance, until you show some remorse and maturity.”

“Father,” Tommy began with alarm. The announcement jeopardised his plans to build the orphanage for Laurel; one could not pay builders and the like without any funds, and his status as the son of a living peer both precluded him from working to earn capital and from drawing directly from the earldom’s resources.

“Do not try to charm your way out of the situation. I’m not budging on my decision until I hear you have sobered up somewhat.”

“Father, a gentleman cannot engage in trade. Think of what shame it would bring to the Merlyn name.”

Malcolm Merlyn let out a snort of laughter. “Well then, I hope the friends you cultivated from gaming and whoring prove loyal when you can no longer afford to buy them drinks.”

Satisfied with his gains, Malcolm returned to his associates, who were waiting patiently for him. With the closing of his father’s study door Tommy inhaled deeply, his hand reaching into his pocket for the wood of his toy horse instinctively. He did not know what he was to do, come tomorrow’s dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The provenance of the messages in the Hyde Park murders, albeit heavily subverted, are as follows: Deuteronomy 32:35, (some incarnation of numerous verses), Matthew 18:22. Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, is the current Royal Opera House, of course. I was actually going to exclude McKenna Hall from my adaptation, but then I decided that a madam of mysterious origins was entirely up her alley, what with her wild past and all. We'll take it that she's a nice madam who does not stand for cruelty to her girls, and that the Fields of Fancy were where courtesans under her wing would entertain prior to having a regular patron. The name for the establishment comes from the fact that Las Vegas can be translated to mean the meadows, and Donna's supposed to be a cocktail waitress from Vegas, so now she's a courtesan from the Fields.
> 
> Women were not supposed to show their teeth when they smiled - it was supposed to be vulgar. (Felicity's wide grins are meant to indicate how guileless she is.) The language of fans was not as developed in the Regency as they would be in the Victorian era but McKenna's resting of the fan on her left cheek would have meant 'No', at least according to my research. I hope you found the way I fit Oliver's mode of transportation into the story hilarious. I had a good laugh when I wrote it in.
> 
> Women weren't commonly secretaries until much later and it was my understanding that a secretary/accountant was something of a professional, much like a lawyer, or a young man of good birth learning the ropes from another. Felicity's position was thus very unclear and I would think even my characters would have been confused about where exactly to place her. As a governess she would have occupied the liminal area between being part of the family and being a servant; a lot of people have asked why Moira's being so mean to her and the reason is that any association on Thea's part with a illegitimate woman who has not been recognised by her father, and whose mother was a courtesan, would damage Thea's reputation. Diggle has the status of a servant and therefore would never have eaten with the family. The egalitarian tendencies Oliver displays in this chapter is once again a hark to his liberal roots in the source material, and it's a shout-out to people who've watched Belle starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw when references are made to Felicity's being too high to eat with servants but too low to eat with the family.
> 
> It was entirely intentional for Oliver to pull Felicity and the chair over with just one hand. You're welcome. Prinny hated Caroline of Brunswick, though it's certainly quite cheeky for the sheet to allude to that! I thought it was a little odd for Felicity to say 'Gorgeous Laurel' given that they didn't quite use first names as we do now so I sought to explain it. Shoutout to fellow Poldark fans with the 'born to be admired' line, though Felicity was most definitely not born to pull turnips. The gentleman she refers to is Cooper and the word 'gentleman' refers to rank rather than his behaviour.
> 
> Carter Bowen was the perfect son figure that Moira kept praising in Season One, that danced with Laurel to Tommy's chagrin, at the gala organised for Laurel by Tommy. As in 2012, he's still a pompous ass in 1812. Malcolm Merlyn is finally showing his credentials as dad of the year, and his decision isn't logical as it is borne out of his irrational feelings about Tommy's life. I thought it was entirely in character for Tommy to behave a bit like a rebellious teenager with his father (inspired by Julia Quinn's It's In His Kiss!) and I think Malcolm intends to wait for his son to beg him for the funds and then confer them on the basis of restrictive covenants. I know Rebecca Merlyn was shot for her purse but I don't think ladies carried as much in their reticules as on their person and so I thought she could borrow a page from Martha Wayne's book and wear pearls despite being a DC character who isn't bulletproof. She died during the Reign of Terror in France, which puts Tommy at a few years older than the age of 8 when it happened, which is the canon on the show. But as usual I've taken liberties where appropriate.
> 
> I'm really behind on real life responsibilities (even though I've been flirting with a fluffy Olicity oneshot when I was cheating on this story all week) and so I will only frustrate you with the knowledge that I have Flarrow planned for the next chapter and that it may take some time ;P


	22. Demands

This time the dream was different.

Again the inn and the dusty road, the way his hastily pulled-on clothes stretched over his body and the haziness of his mind. Oliver saw his foot stepping into the Queene carriage, felt the weight of his body pitching forward as he entered the confined space of the vehicle.

 _Stop_ , he wanted to say, but the words coagulated in the back of his throat and could not be spat out. He could only see his father’s legs with the scarce light that entered the carriage through the glass panel on either door, the carved top of the cane and the gleam of the Starling signet ring, all jerking forward occasionally with every bump in the road.

He wanted to rap the roof of the carriage, to batter its surface and halt the carriage’s movement, but he could not move: his every limb was weighed down by the invisible shackles of history and fate. The carriage lurched, and he felt sharp pain along his side and in his right leg as the splintered wood of the door pressed into his body.

It appeared his nightmare was taking him through the whole woebegone tale of his leaving, because the scene evaporated and he felt his new surroundings rock to and fro, a rhythmic seesaw accompanied by a salty tang in the air. Based on the previous incarnations of this dream, it would not be a long while before the smell of blood inundated his nose and the slice of a knife would find its way between his ribs.

He had to escape. He had to dream of a happy story, draw upon a memory or fantasy unsullied by the events that began five years ago. The golden tones of a ballroom lit by wax candles came into his mind, an assortment of pastels and silver braid moving in precise circles around him to the screeching orchestra.

He shook his head hard. That memory always ended in Laurel’s tear-filled eyes staring at him, her mouth falling open as she asked him, “Why?” Oliver ran through memory after memory, searching for a glimmer of something that would give him peace.

 _Honeysuckle_. That was what had brought him out of his panic the last time he had a nightmare. He tried to conjure up the scent, and his breathing evened. Yes, he could sense it now, the pleasing notes of the flower’s smell filling his lungs and bringing to him a measure of calm, of cleansing.

The carriage was before his eyes again, standing upright on that same dusty road. He pulled its door open and sat himself next to the billow of skirts belonging to its sole occupant, the vehicle instantly picking speed and rolling forward. The smell of honeysuckle still filled the air, and somehow he knew he was happy.

Oliver’s eyes snapped open. He was in his room in Starling House and there was only the smell of the brandy he had left untouched next to him lingering in his air. A quick glance at the window told him that he had few hours of the night left to complete his plans, and he pulled on a hooded cloak before swinging a leg out of the window.

It was a short climb – more of a slide – down to the ground and he found Devil readied for him just outside the stables. The address Roy had given him came to mind and he urged his steed into a canter towards it, the wind coursing through his air and skimming his cheeks with the speed he was traversing London at.

As he approached he saw that a diminutive figure was at the door, making quick work of its lock with a quiet efficiency even Oliver had to admire. Oliver dismounted and placed a hand on his stable hand’s collar.

“What do you think you’re doing here?”

Roy’s blue eyes were unrepentant. “You wanted the coroner’s identity because you wanted the bodies, didn’t you, your grace? I thought I’d steal one for your grace – Sin’s guarding an empty cart just down the street.”

With a bow and full quiver on his person and a hood drawn over his head, there was no denying the irregularity of his own visit to this neighbourhood. As he released Roy’s collar, it occurred to him that the lad had been unusually helpful whenever a request had been put to him; Diggle had opined that there was some degree of hero-worship in the lad’s attitude to him.

This course of action was not one that Oliver particularly desired to be emulated by others. He nocked an arrow to his bow and considered how best to adapt to the change in manpower availability.

“Were you intending to scare the coroner into bringing you the corpses? You’re certainly dressed like it, though I would have gone with red rather than green. What were you going to say?”

Oliver ignored the questions; he had yet to fully plan that particular part of his mission although intimidation was definitely his preferred method of extracting information. “Roy, watch Devil and the door. Whistle sharply if anyone’s coming and take him home immediately if my presence is found out.” He made for the narrow flight of stairs in the house.

“You brought a prize thoroughbred out for this? Also, why don’t you say, ‘You have failed this city’?”

“Why would I do that?” Oliver inquired of his resourceful stable hand, though he began silently testing the syllables on his tongue immediately at the boy’s suggestion.

Roy shrugged, wrinkling his freckled nose. “Heard it in a pantomime once. We are in London, after all, and it wouldn’t do to just shake the man awake if you’re going to the trouble of dressing all mysterious and wraith-like.”

The hood was to preserve his identity and not for theatrics, but he saw no sense in going into an explanation and wasting what little time he had before dawn came, and he began ascending the staircase stealthily, his body pressed to the wall so as not to cause a creak.

There should have been a strong stench of rotting flesh coursing through the house from the workshop on ground floor, but only faint hints lingered in the musty hallways, the peeling wallpaper and scuffed paneling more ostensible in a person’s first impression of his surroundings.

He heard noisy snores emitting from the door down the corridor. It was the room furthest from the road, at the back of the house, and Oliver pushed it open with his gloved hand.

A heavy-set man was lying amidst creased sheets in a small bed, his mouth open to facilitate his labored breathing, which reverberated against the plain walls and the sole chest of drawers to the side of the room. The air was thick with the smell of sweat.

Oliver released his arrow, aiming for the headboard. The coroner awoke in shock as the bedframe rattled with the impact made when the arrow struck the wood behind his head.

“Edward Fyers,” growled Oliver. “You have failed this city.”

The man’s eyes bulged as he took in the menacing form that loomed over him at the foot of his bed, the tautness of the longbow’s string as Oliver aimed his second arrow at his forehead.

“Please, it’s not my fault – one minute they were still here, and then I turned my back, and they were gone! I-I have not sold them, I swear – doctors never go for these mauled corpses.”

Oliver lowered his bow, just remembering to drop his voice into a gravelly register lower than the cultured tones he usually used, as he demanded, “Where are they?”

“I don’t know – there was no note, no indication of where nine bodies could have gone and why someone would have wanted them just before dinner… I’m telling the truth, I swear, please don’t make me the tenth…”

Fyers’s every word was a whimper, his gaze fixed on Oliver’s chin, the only part of his face that was not obscured by the shadow of the hood. Given the absence of the odour associated with this line of work, Oliver was inclined to believe the coroner, even though a new wave of frustration swept through him.

He ripped the arrow he had sent into the headboard savagely, bringing its sharp tip to the soft flesh just under Fyers’ jaw. “This meeting never happened. If I find out that you lied to me, I’ll send this arrow through your eye.”

With a sweep of his cloak, Oliver stalked over to the side of the room and slipped out through the window. Roy jumped as Oliver dropped to the ground in a crouch, though his fingers immediately began replacing the state of the door’s lock before he had picked it.

“The bodies are not here. Find out who was seen in this neighbourhood around dinnertime yesterday and report to me immediately when you do.”

Oliver swung himself onto his horse and rode back towards Verdant at a relentless pace.

* * *

Today was one of her bad days. Laurel walked as quickly as she could without breaking into a run, moving closer to the wailing that filled the corridors of Lance House.

“Where is she?” Dinah was screaming, buckling tightly against the restraining arms of the servants that held her down.

Laurel paid no heed to the twinge of pain that pierced her heart as she took in her mother’s teary eyes and tousled hair, and she rushed forward to place a hand on her mother’s shoulder at once.

“Shhh….” she said. “Sara’ll be back sometime later, mother.”

Lady Lance was never easily appeased when she was in one of these fits, her eyes alert and suspicious as opposed to the unfocused stare she typically directed to all visitors. She shook off Laurel’s hand roughly; rage striking her features.

“You’re lying - you’re lying to me, Laurel.”

Indeed she was, for Sara’s letter to her detailing in no uncertain terms that she would not return to London, and that their parents were not to know was tucked in her pocket at that very moment. Laurel tried for an expression of sincerity.

“No, mother,” she began, but Dinah began shrieking again, fresh tears coursing down her cheeks as she sought to be free of her bedclothes.

“You’re lying! My baby’s not all right, is she? That’s why you’re lying to me – tell me what has happened to my Sara!”

A scratch on the door – Hilton and her father were standing outside. The butler’s eyes were tactfully averted while he waited for Laurel to approach him. Conversely Quentin came in to help hold down his wife, calling out her name as he tried to get through to her despite the fit of madness that had seized her.

With her father’s intervention, Laurel went to give Hilton her attention, and she drew the door towards her person so as to obscure what was ensuing in the room behind her as she asked him what news he bore.

“Lord Thomas Merlyn requests to see you, miss.”

She bit her lip. This was a terrible time, and even though Tommy was discreet and already privy to more of her family’s troubles than any other person she knew, she did not want him to see Dinah like this.

“Tell him that the family is currently not seeing anyone.”

“Is everything all right?” Tommy’s voice cut into their conversation, just as the screaming subsided into muffled sobs. He emerged from the stairwell, walking slowly towards her. He seemed troubled; there were hints of distress behind the concern in his eyes.

Laurel grimaced, just as Hilton made himself scarce. “No, Tommy, it isn’t and I’m sorry to say this, but I can’t speak right now.”

“I wanted to show you something,” he said, holding his hat and cane before him. His tone was oddly impersonal, as if he were intentionally detaching himself from the situation he referred to. “Before I – I’m just having a problem with my funds right now, after a row with my father last night.”

She gave him a sympathetic look; she knew how difficult he found his relationship with the earl and wished she could give him the comfort of friendship in exchange for his candidness with her right now, in his time of need.

“I’m so sorry to hear that, Tommy,” she said, reaching forward to place her hand on his. “I - ”

Dinah’s wail interrupted what she was about to say, and Laurel bit her lower lip again as she made out ‘baby’ and ‘injured’ in the torrent of words her mother was crying out. She turned back to look at Tommy, her mind working quickly towards a solution for his most immediate problem.

“I need to return to my mother. I’ll see you at the soirée tonight, but in the meanwhile I think you should ask Ollie to introduce Mr Walter Steele to you – he owns a bank, I believe, or you could ask Ollie for a loan. I know it’s been somewhat awkward with Ollie recently, given all that’s happened, but I know he wouldn’t ignore a friend in need.”

She gave his hand a quick squeeze and then closed the door, striding hastily back to her mother’s bedside. Dinah’s present fit was fraying, but from her experience Laurel knew that this was merely the prelude to a couple of days where her mother would refuse all food and water until someone brought Sara to her, or she succumbed to the strain of her self-imposed fast first.

Laurel inhaled sharply and made a decision that she knew would draw outrage towards her person from all the members of her family. Pulling out the letter, she said, “Here, mother, I have here a letter from Sara. She is well and wishes us all happiness. Would you like me to read it to you?”

She disregarded the disbelief shown by her father, the bewilderment crossing her mother’s face and read.

* * *

John was most gratified to find Lyla in Number Two – as they both agreed to call it – perusing a manual, a cup of tea by her side. He smiled with delight, not just from the fact that this would speed up his inquiry considerably.

“I’ve just been to see the Wall,” he said, using the sobriquet that other agents referred – though not to her face – to Amanda Waller with. “I’m afraid I need a favour of you, Lyla, following the futility of that meeting.”

Her grey eyes rose to meet his dark ones. “What, one night away and suddenly you can’t even spare the only woman you’ve ever loved in your life a kiss in greeting before you make demands of her?”

He grinned and bent to press his mouth to hers with a smack. That particular turn of phrase had been confessed in the drowsy hours after the first time they had made love, and he had a feeling when he uttered those words then that they would eventually come back to haunt him, as they did now.

“What favour?” she asked, after they had exchanged a few more kisses, her voice deeper than it usually was from arousal and her hand beginning to worm its way into his waistcoat.

“Sir George always kept personal copies of the key files under the War Office’s purview. I need to read the ones on Stellmoor and the previous Duke of Starling; you’re the only one who has access to those rooms in his house.”

He had spoken briefly of his commitment to Oliver’s mission the last time he was in Number Two; Lyla had accepted his reasons for the decision but stated that she would not be an accessory, not knowing the man well herself.

At his request Lyla pulled away, crossing her arms and her lips pursed to form a moue of displeasure. “You want me to steal from my father?”

“Borrow,” corrected John, pulling a chair to sit next to her. “I only need to read them and he can have them back immediately after. I never understood why he would keep confidential materials in his home anyway; surely that is a violation of our protocol.”

“Father’s not particularly enthused about Mrs Waller, to be honest,” conceded Lyla, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear. Following a few seconds when she screwed her face into her thinking frown, she sighed.

“Very well, Johnny, I’ll call on father on Wednesday afternoon and you can meet me here for dinner.”

With the last of her final words, he picked up her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Sweet Lyla.”

She rolled her eyes at him, and he pressed another kiss to the centre of her open palm. “Lovely Lyla.”

“You only speak such compliments when you want something from me, Johnny.”

Biting back his grin, he said, as solemnly as he could, “Really now? I seem to recall being a little more profuse with my compliments in this very room when it was about what you wanted just two nights ago. Shall we test my hypothesis out?”

He did not wait for her reply before he picked her up and moved towards the Recamier by the fireplace, though any sounds he uttered for the next thirty minutes were more incoherent than adjectival. But Lyla was lavishly complimented anyway. 

* * *

Felicity stretched, feeling life enter her stiff limbs, which had been stationary for quite some time while she bent over the little desk that Oliver had designated as hers.

She had made little progress in translating the messages left by the previous duke for his son, despite scrutinising every single one of the papers Oliver had handed to her during the day. As she had concluded in Cambridgeshire, the assorted pattern of letters and numbers strongly suggested that an external key was needed, but she was loath to start systematically perusing every single book in the Queene family library, and had spent all day trying to find a pattern in the jumble of characters that were consistent throughout the stack instead, to no avail.

 _At least she had already tested it against the Christian bible_ , she thought, _which meant one less book out of thousands to scour for an answer._

Arranging all the papers into a discreet pile, she locked them into the little compartment in the desk and then exited the library, travelling down the corridor at a leisurely stroll. As always when she worked on coding or translation, each piece’s set of symbols were in her mind, ready to be summoned for reference at a second’s notice the moment she found a way into deciphering the message. She needed to rest her mental faculties now, if she was to plunge back into the text after she had taken supper by herself in her room.

Her eating arrangements were something of a mystery to everyone involved, and the staff was most confused by her presence: a place had been laid out for her at the breakfast table this morning while she waited fervently for food upstairs, which she only discovered when the pangs of hunger became too audible to ignore and she finally went downstairs just as they were clearing away the family’s leftovers away.

Even the location of her workspace was something of a maverick decision on Oliver’s part – it was improper for her to share his study as would a normal secretary and so he had decreed that a desk be set up in the library for her use, just so they would not need to station a maid in the room all day to serve as a chaperone. Oliver was also most emphatic in his instructions to the effect that in no circumstances should Miss Smoak be disturbed from her work and that, as a corollary of this first edict, every convenience was to be made available to her at her request.

 _The duke_ , she corrected herself as she climbed up the stairs to the first floor. _Or his grace. But not Oliver._ She could say goodbye to a duke after he no longer needed her but it was harder to guard her heart against an Oliver.

“I charge you, O daughter of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please,” she quoted from memory, trying not to recall the other parts of Song of Songs that might otherwise apply to her situation.

It had been her favourite text growing up, even above the fantastic tales told by Scheherazade in _The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment_. Her father had preferred she read Greek and Latin and her mother was partial to Gothic novels, but there was something about that book of the bible that always appealed to her, in the rare occasions when her father was away, and Donna would insist they read a section of the Gentile bible found too in the Tanakh so as not to forget her heritage.

Donna had a marked preference for the Torah and the Nevi’im – she liked Rahab especially, and was partial to Mary Magdalene although Felicity always pointed out that Mary Magdalene was not part of the Tanakh – but Felicity had always loved Song of Songs from the Hamesh Megillot.

Its poetry made her believe that there could be love in this world, beyond the boundaries of kinship, where a person could find another and be absolutely devoted to another. Some people lived like that. She wanted to.

As she approached the stairwell she paused at the large painting that hung over the profusion of flowers decorating the staircase hall. The housekeeper had told her that the real collection of art was in the country house, but generations of Starling dukes had ordained that a family portrait be displayed here, in full view of all their visitors, and so the present duchess had not seen fit to alter this when she took over the management of the estate from her late husband.

It was still light enough to see without a candle, and she lingered on the gilt of the frame and the intricacy of the brushwork setting out the idyllic pastoral landscape before she studied the people depicted in the painting.

At the centre was seated a man who wore his patrician lineage in the sweep of his brow and the bridge of his nose, as surely as he did in the ermine lining of his court dress and the wig that adorned his head. This was likely the previous Duke of Starling. Next to him was his duchess, with every bit of her regal bearing in her posture, her blonde hair swept up in a sophisticated way typical of the previous century, drawing attention to the piercing intelligence of her eyes and her fine features. It would take a blind man mean of spirit to conclude that the duchess had lost her beauty, but she was truly stunning in this portrait, in the way she all but invited the viewer to bow in her presence with her eyes alone.

There was a clean-shaven young man who stood next to the previous duke, whom Felicity recognised as Oliver. Unlike his father he eschewed a wig but his hair was tied back in a rakish queue and his blue eyes gleamed with mischief, a foreshadowing of the roguish reputation he was soon to acquire in real life.

Standing on her toes, she leaned closer to examine the way the man she now knew had been rendered as a youth. He was every bit as handsome – the strong jaw and chiseled angles had not altered – but superficial changes like the development of grooves of experience in his tanned face, the fact that he now wore his hair in a severe Brutus style, or that the shadow of his golden beard persisted in adorning his face by midday aside, the man she knew was different.

It was in his eyes. No longer carefree, no longer defiant, but weary, and melancholy. That was evident in his bearing now even as he joked with her.

There was a fourth person in the picture, a female child perched upon a rocking horse in the foreground, cradling a bunch of white lilies. This had to be Lady Thea, the woman to whom all the flowers lining Starling House’s corridors was addressed. The artist had seen fit to give her the same regal bearing as her other family members, but apart from the duchess’s hauteur and bone structure, Felicity could see little of the thirteenth duke in her thick cascade of brown locks and the tilt of her eyes.

She heard the rustle of skirts behind her and she whirled round to see a slender young woman dressed in a cream-hued ball gown, pearl combs tucked into her thick dark hair. The tilt of her eyes and the coral of her mouth had remained unchanged from the artist’s interpretation; this was The Lady Thea Queene, daughter of the thirteenth Duke of Starling and sister to the current duke.

“You must be Miss Smoak.” It was not a question, and Felicity wondered if she had to curtsey as she replied in the affirmative. The girl’s eyes travelled down her person, and she was grateful that she had put on the drabbest of the gowns in the duke’s order, which had arrived at the house at eleven that morning.

The duke had bought all manner of unsuitable things interspersed in the totality of his order, glossy satins and silky charmeuses, amongst the cotton batistes and voiles that were more suitable for someone of her station. Every single conceivable garment in a woman’s wardrobe had been bought for her, including two white dresses and a riding habit, an assortment of gloves and matching bonnets, and two ball gowns of a fabric so luxurious and bearing designs she dared not examine too closely lest she fell in love with the gowns, such that it quite tore her up inside to fold them back into the box in which they came, without even holding them up to her person.

All of those fine clothes had to go, save for the few serviceable gowns that she could justify wearing for her secretarial tasks even though the tailoring on those included intricate pleating in the skirts, which she would refuse to even consider in normal circumstances for how dear its cost would be to her. Felicity did, however, keep the all lacy underthings that came with the clothes – she told her conscience that it was not her place to keep the duke in line with his injudicious expenses and that much effort had been expended in making them in her size.

Yet Lady Thea did not approve of her gown now, for her lip was curling ever so slightly in distaste as she completed her perusal. “Miss Smoak. I am given to understand that I am to treat you as if you were a governess. Have there been instructions given as to your attire?”

Felicity shook her head slowly, wondering what she would say. Unlike the duchess, Lady Thea did not strike her as having a specific opinion about her addition to Starling House, save for a natural curiosity about the woman that had been the subject of the latest spat between her family members. This was a step down from the pique directed towards her from the duchess, and the disfavour in her opinion of Felicity was evident in the duchess’s eyes as she descended the stairs to join her daughter, too decked out in her finery.

“Unless mother has intentions to exact cruel and unusual punishment upon your person, or unless you are in mourning,” declared Lady Thea, darting an emphatic glance at her mother. “I would prefer to see you in colours, Miss Smoak. I’m sure my mother will not be that petty to quibble over your dress insofar it does not offend normal notions of decency.”

“Thea, Miss Smoak is not a member of the staff and she is at liberty to wear what she pleases,” called Oliver’s voice from above stairs, and he emerged in a formal scheme of black, save for the cream of the cloth around his neck. Diggle was next to him, too garbed in black.

Lady Thea shot her brother a saucy smile. “I highly doubt it, though Miss Smoak is of course at liberty to correct my impression.”

Felicity thought that reserving her reply was the wisest course of action in the matter, and to her relief the Queenes were urged to hurry towards their destination by their mother at that moment. Oliver pressed what felt like a piece of paper into her hand as he passed her, eyes trained on his conversation partner, though for a moment she nearly flinched at the warmth of his hand against hers. She waited till she was in the privacy of her little room before she opened the note; in his familiar hand were the words ‘ _Wait for me to return before you sleep tonight. I need updates on your progress._ ’

It was just a work-related demand, she told herself sternly. Nothing to inspire the fervent sense of anticipation in her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know always say I will take time, and then out comes a chapter because of how inspired I am, to the expense of aforementioned real world responsibilities. Flarrow doesn't quite happen in this one (have already written 300 words of that scene) because all these little loose ends needed to be dealt with somewhat before they go to Iris's soiree.
> 
> The lucid dreaming section was somewhat inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and my fellow Oliciters will recognise where 'happy story' comes from. The final part of that dream sequence is a reference to the deleted scene from Season 3, which is spoken of and materialises in the finale. True to the show Oliver uses a lot of windows when there are doors here and he uses his catch-phrase at Roy's suggestion. (I think it's hilarious how this takes place in London, when it is actually referred to as the City.) Fyers is the flashback baddie from Season 1 of course, though I have rather depowered him for the purposes of the story.
> 
> It is my headcanon that Laurel Lance is more intuitive than sensing if she took a MBTI test and Felicity vice versa, and I think this affects my writing in that Felicity's scenes tend to be very detail driven while Laurel doesn't really notice details at all when she's trying to stop all the fires in her life. I'm sorry about the sadness of the Dinah scene, but I needed it to set two story lines in motion.
> 
> To readers who are Dyla fans - I hope you liked this scene, which I squeezed in for your fun and mine, because there's been an inordinate amount of angst in this story of late and I wanted very much to lighten up. I wish Oliver and Tommy would learn something from John Diggle - less angst = fluff and more ;) - but they are a little stubborn in this part of the story (Oliver is just stubborn about everything, to quote John in a previous chapter.)
> 
> I used a lot of terms to indicate Felicity's Jewish heritage, but I don't really want to presume about my readership, so can I rely on your googling abilities to find those out? If there's anything I've gotten wrong please let me know immediately, and also I personally love Song of Songs and see an avenue for more quotes to be incorporated. Like the reference to wine (I'll leave you to think about how that can be done.) I'm very guilty of inserting my own aesthetic preferences whenever I write Felicity's fish out of water experiences in Starling House and I'm aware that canonically it is Thea who is more fashion-obsessed, hence the incorporation of the 'cruel and unusual punishment line', used in reference to a different character because Moira is a peeress who cannot be put in prison unless in very specific circumstances, and is unlikely to be stripped of her own clothes even if so. But it's also not satisfactory to only say Oliver bought too many nice things for Felicity when he was given the opportunity to do so (I maintain that he would have bought her nice things if Seasons 1 and 2 afforded him the chance when he was still rich. In Arrow 2.5 he did get her the wine)! I think it's always been consistent from my end that he doesn't think that she's anywhere below him in status, and hence his willingness to get her things that he would anyone else who is important to him. I think Felicity wearing fine things would be commented upon by the ton, so it remains to be decided whether she takes Thea's words at face value.
> 
> I hope you liked this update - onto writing Barry's appearance as well as the rest of the Flash cast that I can have in the context of this story!


	23. Plans

It was a calculated decision for the Lances and Queenes to stand together at the Wests’ soirée: a direct appeal to the most open-minded amongst the peerage by virtue of their host’s origins and the guest list alone.

Much like Walter, Joseph West was something of an outlier in the strictures of Society, which normally excluded those with their swarthy complexion from the ranks of the _beau monde_. Unlike Walter, Mr West did not own a bank but his extensive holdings in the West Indies and personal favour with the Prince Regent following the popularity of his literary publications meant that it was impossible to exclude the Wests during the Season.

Moira looked about the ballroom to canvas her battlefield while her family was announced, a beatific smile upon her face when Miss Iris West came to greet them in her capacity as hostess. As always the company was suitably varied without causing embarrassment to any guests falling at the end of either spectrum, and the ballroom was filled with just the right amount of people. The gentlemen and women were in equal numbers, and the refreshment table appeared suitably endowed.

“You are a wonder at organising these affairs, Miss West,” said Thea, her eye dancing with gaiety and her brown curls bobbing with the effusiveness of her praise.

 _Clever girl_ , thought Moira, inasmuch as the sentiment was true. The success of their campaign tonight was measured entirely by Thea’s popularity with the _ton_ , and their hostess had a reputation for her vast knowledge about the _ton_ and its scandals, which would serve as a shield for the women she favoured.

Her strategy for the night was two-pronged: as always Lady Thea was the model of charismatic wit and beauty, the two qualities that capitulated her to the apex of popularity when she first came out. As reinforcement, the Duke of Starling had come to prove how much the _ton_ loved a reformed rake that came with wealth and a title, especially if he danced with every available woman on the marriage mart in attendance after dancing with his sister to demonstrate the closeness of their relationship.

Finally, the coup de grâce: Oliver was to finish the night by dancing two dances with Laurel Lance, thereby giving the _ton_ fodder for their long-lived obsession with the reportedly star-crossed romance, and distracting them from the existence of the woman that he had brought home yesterday afternoon.

It did not take much time or bluestocking levels of knowledge to see that her plan was not working. No woman was fool enough to reject an invitation to dance from a duke this early into the night, but for the first time since her highly successful coming out Thea remained in want of a partner after four dances since her initial arrival at an event.

Her daughter was being snubbed by the _ton_ , indirect as it was, for they could not exclude the daughter of a Lady Patroness, but they could discourage their men from dancing with her, and a woman not in favour did not attract proposals. Moira herself had the social clout to compel a change in the outward manifestations of Thea’s fall from popularity by imposing upon the men she knew, but the damage was clearly done, and tides of opinion were neither halted nor changed with such blunt methods.

A duchess could not beg, by virtue of her position. She could only bestow, persuade or make a trade of favours. The goodwill she had built up over the years allowed her to shift boundaries for others, but glossing over the fact that her son was keeping a woman of questionable origins in her family home required much more than that. Oliver’s rash act required the _ton_ to look past their prejudices from birth and fortune. And a bed of vipers keen to preserve the foundations of their own influence would never overlook the two strikes against his precious Miss Smoak.

Even Moira was vulnerable to the _ton_ ’s disapproval. As she drifted towards the group of matrons that had come as chaperone to their wards and daughters, she found a smugness that had never arisen before in each of their greetings to her.

“I daresay I’ve been having a lot of problems with my staff of late,” remarked Mrs Catherine Spencer loudly to her friend, before looking intently at Moira. “Surely you can advise us all, duchess, given the recent addition to your household?”

Moira smiled, allowing herself to relax somewhat upon spotting a Mr Bartholomew Henry Allen, Esquire inviting Thea for a dance. He was known to be a most indifferent dancer, but it did Thea’s reputation some good to be seen dancing, at the very least.

“I’m so very sorry to hear of your troubles, Mrs Spencer. I’ve always found it is merely a question of making the distinction between privileges and entitlements. Insofar all parties are clear about where that line is, I’ve never had a problem with establishing a sense of one’s station. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“But surely station alone cannot be an indication of morals, your grace. Or circumspection.”

“Civility,” asserted Moira. “A most underrated virtue. I do not make it a habit to inquire into the morals of my staff, insofar as they keep their personal predilections out of my home, and away from my eyes and ears.”

“Well said, duchess, but what if events insist on taking place under one’s very nose?”

Moira chuckled with humour she did not feel. “My, my, Mrs Spencer. Whatever are the problems that are plaguing your ability to preserve propriety amongst your staff? Pray tell us why a termination of employment, with no references, is insufficient as an inducement for their performance.”

The woman could not answer, since her employment difficulties existed solely in the realm of fancy. Schooled into submission, she changed the subject, directing the group’s attention to the couples dancing before them.

“The duke is most attentive tonight, your grace. How gratified you must be as a mother that there is no hostility between the Queenes and the Lances after all that has happened – Miss Lance and his grace make a most well-matched pair.”

In truth the girl seemed remarkably distracted as she mechanically partnered Oliver in an allemande, her eyes riveted on one particular corner of the ballroom.

“A mother can only hope that her son marries a suitable woman, one that does not bring discord into her relations with her new family,” replied Moira, following Laurel’s line of sight to examine what had so thoroughly arrested her attention away from Oliver.

Lord Thomas Merlyn was ensconced in a group of young woman of an age with Thea. He had drawn them all into a bout of titters, but Moira’s experienced eye told her it was the brunette at the far end, a Lady Harriet Shane with seven thousand a year for a dowry, that was his target. It appeared Oliver’s friend was finally hunting for a wife, after hanging on Miss Lance’s words for years.

“That being said, I do believe that my son has not decided on any woman in particular.” Moira let her volume fall as she leant conspiratorially towards her fellow matrons now, her large eyes darting about in an imitation of a desire to be discreet. “I personally would favour a woman of discretion and virtue, at the very least to exercise a firm hand in managing our staff. As you said, Mrs Spencer, it is getting rather difficult to encourage propriety these days, and my son can be rather stubborn when it comes to his more modern ideas. It would take the combined weight of opinion shared by all the women in his life to undo the recent hiring oversight, for instance.”

She looked up and found that her son and Laurel were missing from the ballroom, and so she excused herself to let her words fully sink into her audience’s minds, the glint of ambition appearing in their eyes as they angled for their daughters to become the next Duchess of Starling.

Sure enough, as she left the ballroom in search of her son, Thea was suddenly met with a profusion of invitations to dance, all from gentlemen with eligible sisters. Moira allowed herself a breath of relief; she had secured a temporary cessation of hostilities but there were still many hours before the end of the ball for the _ton_ to turn against the Queenes again.

As she traversed down the dark corridor, she heard voices emanating from a room down the corridor. Its door had been left ajar, and she spied Oliver and Laurel standing a mere foot apart amongst empty music cases as she came to a stop just outside.

“Have the both of you lost your minds?” she hissed, barely containing the anger she felt. Their very presence here ran the risk of scandal, which was what she had been working all evening to counter, even at the cost of sending Walter a note explaining why they could not be seen even speaking to each other in public that evening. “Return to the ballroom at once. Separately.”

Laurel had been holding a hand up to her eyes whilst Oliver held her gently by her elbow, but she shook off his hand and assumed the placid expression of ethereal reserve she had always excelled at. “I beg your pardon, your grace. This will not happen again.”

She left in the direction of the ballroom, which left Moira to turn her ire towards her son. He had worn black for the night, and in the dim light of the room she reckoned she saw her late husband standing before her, in the sweep of his broad shoulders and the hostility radiating off his person. Unlike Thea, who favoured her, Oliver had always taken after his father in his personality and scruples, even down to his choice of company.

“Laurel’s family is going through a difficult period, and so I have discharged her of the second obligation she promised to you. I further add that I have complied with your instructions all evening, mother,” said her son coolly. “If you could give my regards to Miss West, I do believe I will be leaving now.”

How like Robert he was, beyond the colouring that he had inherited from her! The last duke had uttered similar words to her every night in Paris after they were sent there in the wake of the Gordon Riots, whenever he was off to see the latest tart that caught his fancy, Earl Merlyn by his side as his accomplice in sin.

She stared back into the eyes of the son she knew spoke falsehoods to her on a regular basis, whom she was afraid would someday become just like her late husband, and betray the family in the worst possible way. “The soirée is far from over.”

“I have work to do – Miss Smoak has prepared something that requires my urgent approval.”

Moira’s mouth opened into a soundless laugh, her head shaking gently in disbelief. The excuse of work as a cover for his true activities – were all Queene men this predictable? “You are not throwing your sister to the wolves you lured out yourself, just so you can return home to your whore.”

His gaze grew hard, his voice approaching a growl as he said, “I advise you to be very careful in how you refer to Miss Smoak, mother.”

“You just said that she’s waiting for you to return to her, and what is a woman who waits for a man she is not married or promised to but his whore?”

 _Whereas a woman who waited for the man she was married or promised to was nothing but his fool_.

The patter of approaching footsteps stayed whatever biting reply he had prepared for her. Eyes still flashing, her son straightened and said, “I will stay on Thea’s account, but only on her account.” He pushed past her and gave the interloper a curt nod in greeting as he stormed back to the ballroom.

“I see a parent-child relationship fraught with tension is not unique to the Merlyns,” observed Earl Merlyn, a smirk on his face as he approached Moira.

She took a deep breath, not wishing to engage in conversation with him of all people, right after her exchange with Oliver. It was a curious history that she and Malcolm shared, one that she cared not to recall on most days, and certainly not at this very moment. Throwing up every guard she possessed against his discerning nature, she returned his regard as evenly as she could under the circumstances.

“Ah,” said the earl, who was not fooled by her appearance of civility. He raised his brow at her chilly reception. “You’re still bearing a grudge from when I informed you on account of our long friendship that Walter Steele was not an appropriate lover for someone of your status.”

Her dislike stemmed from more than his attempts to bar Walter from their circles some three years ago, not that Moira would ever let him know the true extent of how much she despised him, given that she still needed him.

“And what enlightenment can Lord Merlyn bestow upon this poor little duchess here today?”

Malcolm burst out laughing at that. “Oh Moira,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “How I miss the parties we used to throw, when Robert and Rebecca were still here. They always provided the staid details, and we brought the humour.”

She allowed the corners of her lips to rise to resemble a smile as he sobered.

“I trust you already know of the Countess Rocheva’s appearance in London, given Saturday’s ball. You should know that Simon Lacroix is also in town. My man spotted him along King Street the other night, a streetwalker on each arm.”

Moira fought the urge to express her anxiety more openly than the tightening of her hold on her fan. “My warnings currently hold little weight in my son’s estimation. Can we arrange for Lacroix to be removed from London before he tries to make contact with the duke?”

Malcolm gave her a pitying look. “Moira, your son knows more than he’s letting on. I received very reliable word that he’s been looking into Robert’s murder, and I’d say it is likely Lacroix has already made contact with him.”

“Oliver knows nothing. We’ve already discussed this, Malcolm, when I hired all those thugs you recommended to find out the extent of his knowledge when he first returned – a mission that failed, may I add, because your men decided to have an all-out power struggle just outside Hyde Park!”

She had raised her voice to a louder decibel than the low whisper she had been using in their conversation at the last word. Malcolm waited calmly for her to recover her breath, before he continued in measured tones.

“We’ve always known that his claim of amnesia was not true, but the question of whether he knows the full extent of why Robert was murdered remains open. I maintain that we need to find out as soon as possible what he already knows, and protect his memory of Robert as far as we can, even if we need to thwart his investigations.”

“All the evidence is gone,” she ground out. “You made sure of that.”

Malcolm paused. “Robert did not tell me everything he was doing, Moira. I only found out about the Countess Rocheva from you, for instance. If Oliver was with him in his final moments, who knows if he has already been converted to his sinister cause.”

The blood in her veins ran cold. It was as if she was back in 1807 again, when she had first discovered the evidence of her husband’s ultimate betrayal, far more grave than the philandering ways she had once bemoaned but had already become accustomed to.

“No,” she said, forcing the words out of her tightening throat. “My son is innocent.”

He had to be. She could not live through this again.

“I did not believe when the War Office first informed me about Robert as well, but it remains the truth, Moira, after I confirmed it in a personal meeting with Lacroix. Repair your relationship with your son and find out what he knows quickly, and we had better look into Thea’s marriage soon, in preparation for the worst.”

At that the earl glanced at the watch hanging from his fob, the glint of its metal casing reflecting onto his face, a scar of light over his right eye. “As always, you may call upon my services should you need assistance, Moira.”

He bowed over her free hand and left her standing in taut silence, her fan shaking with the shuddering of her limbs.

* * *

It was only when the grey rays of sunlight began crawling across the Aubusson rug did Felicity finally give up her vigil. She swept the notes she had carefully written out and arranged into the drawer in her desk, the bitter taste of disappointment at the back of her throat.

He had never returned for the meeting he had requested for, even though she had lighted candle after candle as she waited, even though she had pushed herself to present him with some concrete results in her analyses and discovered that there was a chronology to his father’s messages.

Felicity did not think Oliver was trying to demonstrate who held the balance of power between them; it was all the more likely that something had caught his attention and he had no way of informing her of the change in plans. But it did not stop her shame from rearing its ugly head all the same, when she recalled how she had selected the nicest wrapper she had, laid out all the papers neatly and rehearsed the presentation of her findings in her mind as she anticipated his return.

 _Felicity Megan Smoak, you little fool_ , she thought, her cheeks heating from humiliation. _You were waiting for a man to return to you, regardless of the pretext of the meeting._

After all, a courtesan provided more than the comforts of her body – most of Donna’s clientele had been in their dotage, who in all likelihood could not physically do the deed, and who had just wanted her company for the space of a night, to pretend that they had a nubile childlike bride whose eyes widened with wonder at anything they said. Regardless of whether it was in the course of her work or not, Donna naturally excelled at projecting an air of innocence and spreading cheer; that was the quality that Felicity’s own father had delighted in when they were still living together in the house on Wells Street.

What did it matter that it was mathematical observations and hypotheses that Felicity sought to offer Oliver, as opposed to Donna’s brand of humour for her father, when both women waited all night waiting for a man over whom they had no real hold through the bonds of marriage?

She was frustrated, not with Oliver, but with herself. _The Duke of Starling could only be a friend_ , she told herself. _Like Barry_.

Except that she had never once looked at Barry the way she snuck glances at Oliver when he was not looking.

She was midway up the first flight of stairs when the Queenes returned from their event, their inborn elegance less pronounced after a night of revelry. The duke was conspicuously absent, and Lady Thea’s gown had a nasty stain on its bodice, as if something had been spilt onto it by purpose. She quickened her pace and reached the second flight of stairs, praying that she could avoid a confrontation with his family while she was in a state of dishabille.

As her luck would have it, the Duchess of Starling spotted her retreating form before she could slink up to the second floor.

“Miss Smoak,” called out the duchess, though her voice cleaved to weariness more than churlishness.

“Yes, your grace?” Felicity turned and bobbed a curtsey, only because she was not sure if she needed to and erring on the side of caution was always the wiser stance to take in her estimation.

The duchess wrinkled her nose – it was amazing how Felicity’s current position put her a foot above the duchess, who was standing in the first floor staircase hall, but she nevertheless felt apologetic following the duchess’s change in expression. “You do not have to curtsey. After all, you are no servant.”

This was a very different tune from the one she had been singing ever since Felicity had first arrived at Starling House, and she was not quite sure how to respond.

“I’m much obliged for the clarification, your grace,” she blurted, and quickly followed up with a question. “How may I be of assistance?”

“I would like you to join the family for breakfast later – shall we say eleven in the breakfast room?”

Felicity looked at Lady Thea for confirmation that she had indeed heard the duchess right. Lady Thea smirked back at her now, turning to her mother and saying, “Miss Smoak will agree once she finds her tongue amidst her surprise, mother.”

Her job done, the duchess turned towards the wing where her bedroom was, while Lady Thea remained where she stood at the foot of the stairway, her gaze resolutely pinned on Felicity’s form.

“I wanted to talk to you in private, Miss Smoak,” announced Oliver’s sister, once they were alone, climbing up to put them on an equal level of sight. “I had a glass of punch tossed into my face on your account tonight, and I want to know whether it was worth the scandal I exacerbated by tossing two glasses right back where they came from.”

 _Good heavens._ Felicity’s eyes followed Lady Thea’s offhand gesture to the stain, widening in alarm as she imagined the sequence of events that had unfolded.

“Yes, well, Lady Charlotte never had very good aim. Whereas she burst into tears the moment my first – let’s call it an accident, shall we? – hit her squarely in the face and trickled down her bodice.” A satisfied smile appeared on the curve of her lips now. “I’ve been longing to do that, ever since she called me a fatherless, brotherless hoyden behind my back. In any case, my reputation as the pristine and proper Lady Thea is a thing of the past, and I thought you might feel a little less alone to know that you’re not the only trollop in the eyes of the _ton_ living in Starling House, Felicity - may I call you Felicity, if you call me Thea?”

It was an exaggeration – Lady Thea’s behaviour certainly would brand her as flighty and tempestuous as opposed to the insipid milksop demeanour that was celebrated in respectable publications, but the scandal sheets had always obliquely characterised her as spirited, and her innate charm would allow her to gain forgiveness in time, as long as she did not go on to truly breach the _ton_ ’s mores.

Felicity found herself smiling. “At least you get to be the better dressed trollop,” she remarked.

Lady Thea made a show of inspecting the stain on her bodice, her lips pursing just the way her brother’s did whenever he was concentrating hard on the details before him. “Without a doubt, I am. Even with this stain I am the height of fashion in London, whereas you are wandering the hallways in a wrapper.” She took in the ink stains on Felicity’s fingers, and understanding crystallised as a gleam in her dark eyes. “You were waiting for Ollie, weren’t you?”

Felicity did not answer.

“He’s currently escorting the Countess Rocheva back home – some problem with her carriage, apparently, and he failed to consult mother for approval before leaving with her – and so I believe mother has decided that she will be nice to you to court her way back into his good graces, before she lambastes him again about his wilful ways.”

Lady Thea must have caught the flash of hurt in Felicity’s face on her mention of the countess, for she gave her a sympathetic look, and caught both her hands in hers.

“I like you, Felicity Smoak. I don’t precisely know why yet, though I suspect it’s because you’re clearly much more than the sum of your past, or because I’ve never met anyone like you, but I will warn you now that my brother is not to be trifled with. Ollie may be a most devoted brother, but he doesn’t think a thing about breaking any other female hearts, and while he’s been unusually sincere towards you thus far, he’s never remained devoted for long to any single woman. Not even Laurel, when he was engaged to her.”

It was nothing she did not already know, but the words stung all the same.

“I am but his grace’s secretary,” she said. “And since we are speaking frankly I have no intention of becoming his mistress.”

The slight opening of her mouth for a beat and the look in Lady Thea’s eyes revealed that she had a rebuttal to Felicity’s assertion in her mind, but she merely smiled and said, “I knew I liked you. Shall we continue this conversation at breakfast then? Suitably censored so that we don’t shock my poor mother.”

There was an ache in Felicity’s heart, and a weariness that burdened her mind, but as she had learnt from her mother’s career and her own, friendship was a most effective salve when the vagaries of life denied you something more. As rays of dawn crawled on the tiled floors, Felicity Smoak grinned at Lady Thea Dearden Queene.

“Certainly. I bid you good night for now then.” 

* * *

Oliver stepped into the breakfast room of Starling House to find three pairs of disapproving eyes on him and his lack of contrition. He did not like how Moira did not miss his disheveled appearance. He felt uncomfortable on account that Thea noticed how his coat had been thrown hastily onto his person, hanging open where it should have been buttoned, and that his sleeves were bunched up around his forearms rather than pulled neatly to peek out at the cuffs of his fitted coat.

Worst of all, he hated how Felicity’s eyes were tracing the line of his throat in the absence of his neckcloth, and the disappointment that was entering her expression as she saw the streak of rouge Isabel had left on the edges of his collar while had trailing her mouth downwards.

He uttered a hasty “Good morning” but every single curse word he knew was coursing through his mind, and he tried to remember why his acquiescence to Isabel’s request that he escort her home after her coachman took ill during the ball was a good idea then.

For one, it occurred right after Thea reached for two glasses of punch and flung the drink at another aristocratic daughter, thereby undoing all of his efforts to promote the respectability of the Queenes that evening. Laurel had informed him earlier that her parents were aware of Sara’s situation and his duplicity, which meant an upcoming confrontation with Viscount Lance in his near future. The clock had long passed midnight, and he had assumed that Felicity had since given up and gone to bed. Given that his body had been aching for want of release ever since that moment in the library with a woman he could not have, why not Isabel, who was willing and able?

He could see from the shadows under Felicity’s eyes that he had assumed wrong. He did not know how long she had waited, but the way she averted her eyes from the vestiges of his interlude with Isabel made him feel like the worst sort of cad in existence.

A long and detailed apology was owed to her, but Oliver did not know how to begin. He could start with his sincere misconception of fact that she had gone to bed by then, but he could not quite continue with the assertion that he was in want of a woman and Isabel had offered. Or specifically, that he had been tortured by pent-up desire ever since he had woken up to find Felicity curled up next to him in Verdant, her blonde hair splayed out on his pillow, the lines of her calves visible from the way his nightshirt had ridden up her body through the night.

One did not simply stride up to a woman and say, “I had to fornicate with another woman, because I am unreasonably attracted to you, and I can’t even pleasure myself because it invariably will involve fantasies of you, and I will not besmirch your honour in such a way.”

 _It was a logical decision_ , he repeated to himself, but he could not be quite so sure of his conclusion now as he took in the forlorn droop of Felicity’s shoulders. Instead he reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of envelopes addressed to ‘F. M. Smoak’.

“I believe these are yours, Miss Smoak,” he said as neutrally as he could, as he handed the stack to her. It was somewhat surprising to see her seated next to Thea and taking breakfast with the family, but this surely was a good sign that there was no longer resistance to his instructions concerning her living arrangements.

A wave of irritation flared within him as delight appeared on Felicity’s face when she saw that the first letter was from Mr B. H. Allen, Esq. Mr Allen had accosted him on his return to the Wests’ ballroom following his heated conversation with his mother, pressing those letters into Oliver’s hands and solemnly inquiring after Felicity’s health.

“You look like you wish to kill something,” came Thea’s wry tone across the table.

“I’m just curious,” Oliver replied archly. He was indeed curious, about the exact nature of Allen and Felicity’s relationship and why the young pup could make her eyes shine with happiness right after she seemed to be filled with disappointment on Oliver’s account.

“Curious about what, precisely?” Thea asked, her voice taking on a nasal quality that she always put on when she was wont to annoy him with incessant questions as a child.

“Thea, Miss Smoak. I require the room as I wish to speak with Oliver on a matter of urgency. It concerns the Countess Rocheva,” announced Moira, cutting short Thea’s line of inquiry.

Oliver immediately placed a heavy hand on the back of Felicity’s chair to halt its movement backwards as she attempted to rise from her seat.

“Nonsense, mother,” he said in his most polite voice. He sauntered over to the head of the table, and seated himself between his mother and sister. “We haven’t had breakfast together in ages and I don’t see how there is anything regarding the countess that cannot be uttered before the present company.”

As he desired Moira let out a huff of displeasure instead of beginning on the vitriol that no doubt was to follow had her proposed course of action materialised, and he casually picked the bell up to ring for tea.

“By the by, nice aim last night, Speedy,” he said, using the nickname that he had labeled his sister with ever since she completed the riding course at the country estate faster than anyone else ever did at the age of nine.

Thea raised a dark brow but only daubed at her lips with her napkin, while Felicity had become engrossed in her letters and seemed not to notice when Moira set down her cutlery with a clatter at his words.

“That is not a laughing matter. I refrained from saying anything about it last night, but you have no idea how much I dread the publication of the next scandal sheet, what with one of you turning feral in a ballroom, and the other absconding with a most disagreeable woman the moment my back was turned.”

Thea beat him to making protestations against their mother's trenchant criticism. “Mother, it was just punch. And Lady Charlotte tossed her drink first. After calling me a hussy and Miss Smoak here my tutor for acts most unnatural, may I add.”

Oliver was rather glad Felicity was concentrating so hard on her correspondence that she did not hear that particular slur on her character.

“I will be barring her from Almack’s on account of her behaviour, Thea, but that does not mean you may defend yourself in any way that is not above reproach.”

“I for one enjoyed watching it all unfold,” put in Oliver, to his mother’s narrowing of her eyes. In truth he had felt more disbelief and annoyance than humour when Thea had tossed the first glass, on account of his having wasted his evening, but he saw the situation in a different light now, particularly since he recalled the chit that insulted both Felicity and his sister bursting into tears. “I shall always look upon the memory with great relish.”

“Thank you,” responded Thea from his left.

“Ooh…” muttered Moira cantankerously from his right.

His mother would have probably continued her diatribe then, had Felicity not looked up from her letters and exclaimed, “Oliver!”

All at the table fell into stunned silence at her address of him by his first name. She coloured, her blue eyes growing rounder as she tried to explain away her invocation of such a familiarity. “That is, this letter here is addressed to Lord Oliver Queene. Perhaps someone your grace used to know…? I will draft a reply, if your grace could direct me how best to reply to the third paragraph…”

Felicity made to stand up and pass him the letter over everyone’s heads, before she stopped short, sat squarely back down and folded it with both hands. Thea was stifling laughter as she was handed the letter to be passed on to Oliver, Moira watching the whole scene with her mouth set in a flat line.

The letter was signed off with ‘ _Yours affectionately, Barry_ ’ and the relevant paragraph she had directed his attention to spoke of a Caitlin’s desire for Felicity to call after she arrived in London on Tuesday to inspect the corpses from the Hyde Park murders.

He met Felicity’s eyes across the table, and said, “Miss Smoak, I will pay a visit to an old friend this afternoon.”

It was, after all, a Tuesday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felicity's vow to never become a man's mistress is tied to her abandonment issues in this story, but I do believe the lady is beginning to protest too much whenever she invokes this in relation to Oliver! I wanted Thea and Felicity to be friends, and I do believe that Thea would have been intrigued by how original her brother's secretary is. The use of 'trollop' is inspired by Jenny's reference to Claire as such in the episode of Outlander titled Lallybroch, and unfortunately I cannot write a scene where Thea jokingly tells Felicity 'Get in loser, we're going shopping!' in the context of this story. Anyone who wants to hurl rocks at Oliver for getting with Isabel after telling Felicity to wait for him (which is probably worse than what happened in Russia but I maintain he is entirely well-intentioned most of the time), get in line behind Felicity and put your rock down with disappointment and tender feelings in your heart when she stands in front of him to protect him from our rocks. Thea has somewhat fallen from grace despite her resolution in Chapter 18 to remain on top of society, but this allows me to embrace some of her more bad-girl traits on the show and I do believe it would never have lasted for long - Lady Thea was always going to go wild after she married even if this didn't happen. Again Oliver's claim of curiosity in relation to Barry and Felicity is a reference to Stephen Amell's response to an interview question about why Oliver was jealous when Barry appeared, and it occurs to me belatedly that the "I like you...I knew I liked you" slipped out of my mind from Lady Danbury in Romancing Mr Bridgerton.
> 
> Simon Lacroix plays a much larger role in my story (I was inspired from the comic books) than he did in the show. It remains to be seen whether Laurel will point an unloaded gun at him. Catherine Spencer is Kate Spencer, the DA that was murdered during the siege on Starling City in Season Two, and Moira's conversation with her was my favourite part to write in this chapter, apart from Oliver's assertion that nothing about Isabel needs to be said in privacy. For clarification, Moira and Walter are secret lovers in this story but she will not marry him because she wishes to keep her position and the power that comes with it, and marriage is not about love in her estimation. Walter is accommodating her wishes as he loves her.
> 
> Whatever it is Moira thinks about Robert is meant to be a secret until one of Original Team Arrow knows, so save your questions about that. Lady Harriet Shane is the Lady Harriet mentioned from Chapter Nine, and her last name comes from the friend of Thea's that gives her vertigo in the show. There was an exchange I really liked between Oliver and Laurel about Tommy that didn't make its way into this chapter because I wanted to put the focus back onto the murder rather than more relationship drama as the centrepiece (probably didn't work, though at least I didn't need to write another extended argument or more Oliver feeling awful about Laurel and Lauriver blowing up in his face). I felt very strongly about having the Wests be wealthy and somewhat accepted by society, not just because I want Barry to have a happy ending no matter what your preferred Flash ship is. I think it fitting that Joe is a writer given how well read he is. More Flarrow is coming up in the next chapter, because it is a Tuesday, and you may want to know that I have already decided which Olicity lines I'll be adapting for the first scene.


	24. Hurt

He had followed her into the library after breakfast ended, waited as she sat behind her desk and began arranging his father’s papers methodically across its surface. She had not uttered a single word, not even to herself, even though her gaze flickered from edge to edge of the papers before her, and she occasionally paused to read the texts again before she laid them down. Her lips did not move, and that was how he knew the extent of the hurt he had caused her.

From the moment he had met her, she had mumbled and babbled as a matter of course. Some people grew louder and shriller when dealt with an emotional blow, to hide the wound and cope with pain. Felicity was the opposite: words left her when she stepped onto the shores of upmost disappointment or genuine distress.

He had taken the words from her, and he wanted to give them back.

“Felicity,” he finally said, above the rustle of shifting papers.

She raised her head slightly at the sound of his voice, but she did not lift her cloudless eyes to meet his. Instead she opened her mouth and announced in a clipped tone, “An examination of the patterns in which the previous duke’s messages were written suggests that his cipher altered slightly with each sheet. I read each one of them in the hopes of identifying the specific combination of characters used to correspond to an determiner – I’m afraid I only tried five languages, and I probably have to apply my theory to the possibility that this was Greek – ”

This was the news he had waited more than a month to hear, but he paced over to her side, and placed a hand on her shoulder to interrupt her.

Felicity stiffened at the contact, her head turning so she could look briefly at the hand that so easily enveloped her shoulder before she finally met his eyes.

“My father didn’t speak Greek, as far as I know,” he said, noting the red in her tired eyes and the way her lower lip quivered slightly with his words.

“Right,” she pronounced, turning back to the papers. “Very well, then based on the assumption that this was all rendered in English, German, Italian, French or Dutch, the pattern in which the combination of characters recur on each paper strongly indicates that your father switched the code with each fresh sheet.”

“Felicity,” he said again, and this time, when she turned to face him, she did not pull away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you would wait past midnight, and I never intended to forfeit our plans had I known.”

She gave him a small smile in return, and the apprehension he experienced whenever he had to apologise eased somewhat. “There wasn’t a carriage made from a pumpkin to take me away by midnight, you know.”

“No pumpkin-carriage will dare cut short your time with the prince at the ball, my dear Cinderella. You wouldn’t allow it.”

At that her smile grew strained, much to his consternation and confusion. Had he not complimented her? Had he said something wrong? She turned back to the work, and pointed to the first in her arrangement, the bloodstained piece that he had presented to her right at the beginning of their acquaintance.

“Do you see that there’s a line that appears divorced from the rest of the text? At the top of the paper. I thought it was a title when I first looked at it, but the pattern of characters in that title is too different from what is used consistently in the rest of the text. It does, however, match that which is used in this piece.” Here she pointed to the paper that was laid out next to it. “There’s a chronology to these papers, and having worked backwards, only this one,” she pointed at the last in her arrangement, “lacks a reference to another text. I think we’ll only need to solve this from first principles – for want of a better phrase – to access the information in the others.”

Admiration rose in him at the acuity of her mind. She had accomplished all of that in a day, when he had been staring at these papers for a good month with no progress.

“You’re remarkable,” he said, unable to help himself.

At that her mood lifted somewhat, and she appeared to be biting back a grin, the flush of pleasure nonetheless showing on her cheeks. “Thank you for remarking on it.”

Oliver leaned over and picked up the final sheet of paper she had referred to, as if he could descry his father’s intention from staring at the rows of letters and numbers again. Was there something else that he had missed, something that his father had told him to help him understand the messages that were left behind?

“I’d work on it this afternoon but I would very much like to be part of the company going to Caitlin’s. She’s a friend and respected colleague from my previous work with the Canary, and at the very least I can perform introductions.”

He had thought to head to his club before meeting Diggle at the abode of her mysterious ‘Caitlin’, who sounded to be a Bird of Prey, from Felicity’s words. He placed the final piece back where it came from, ignoring the niggling feeling that his apology to her was only half-completed, and that there was something else that needed to be addressed between them, for her words had not truly returned.

“Certainly. I need to call upon the countess before I join you and Diggle – I left something behind at her house, and I don’t think Roy has done anything to deserve running such an errand. I’ll see you at three then.”

* * *

Laurel knocked on the door to her father’s study for the third time that day. There was, for the third time, no response.

“Father,” she called out. “Please let me in so we can talk.”

No response. She took a deep breath, one that was necessary to prevent the spiking of her own temper. He had shut himself into his study since she read Sara’s letter yesterday, refusing to accompany her to the Wests’ soirée as was rightly required, Laurel being an unmarried woman, while her mother lay in bed in a most depressive mood, staring blankly at the ceiling and refusing to respond to anyone who spoke to her.

In hindsight, reading Sara’s words out _ad verbatim_ might probably have not been a good idea, given that the relevant words included, “Pray do not expect me to pretend as if I were merely divorced from the family because of insurmountable obstacles out of my control. I do not wish to return; it is better if you think me dead to you should my insistence on this matter vex you.”

Quentin had insisted on reading the letter himself, his face growing white and the edges of the paper on which Sara’s message was written crumpling in his hands as he gripped it harder with every line he read.

“Where is she?” he asked, after that terrible silence during which his attention was solely focused on Sara’s letter.

“I went to Bristol instead of visiting Aunt Barbara last week. Sara’s been living there for a while,” said Laurel, hoping that a full story would ameliorate the shock and worry faced by her parents.

But their conversation stopped there. He left for his study and had not come out since.

She made her mind up. “Hilton,” she said, her tone at its most imperative. “Kindly unlock the door to my father’s study.”

The key ring was already in his hand, but still the man wavered. “Miss Lance, the viscount said very specifically not to disturb him when I brought supper up last night.”

“Hilton.”

He unlocked the door, and Laurel stepped into the darkness of her father’s seclusion, the reek of emptied brandy bottles enveloping her as she approached him.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” muttered Quentin sullenly. He was slumped at his table without a neckcloth, pondering a half-empty bottle that he held precariously at the edge of his desk.

She tried for patience, resisting her urge to pluck the bottle out of his hands and shout at her father for being so wrapped up in his own pain that he did not notice anyone else’s. They were all sick in this family, even if they were not bedridden like Dinah was, unable to look beyond the pain that suffused their own bodies.

“Father, you’re hurting, and you haven’t eaten properly in a long while. I cannot persuade mother to eat when you are refusing food as well.”

“Why eat when your youngest daughter declares that she rather be dead than see you, and when your eldest daughter lies about her whereabouts and conceals the fact that she found her little sister, when she knows that you’ve been torturing yourself with the agonising possibility that that you’ve lost a daughter for five years?”

“Father, that is not fair,” Laurel said, a little brusquely despite her resolution to sound reasonable and calm.

“Fair? You had news of her. You went to look for her, without my permission, without my knowledge. And when you discovered where she was and what she was doing, you came back here, and you never said a word, not until you were forced to by your mother’s fits. How long were you intending to stay silent?”

She did not want to answer the question. “Father, surely such speculation is immaterial in light of recent revelations…”

“Answer the question, Laurel!”

“Until she gave her consent,” she said. “Or perhaps after a few months – she made me promise not to tell before I left, and I wasn’t going to break my promise without having tried to persuade her otherwise first.”

“Damn it, Laurel, you knew how much your mother and I were hurting! You knew that our family has fallen to pieces because of Sara’s disappearance, and when you found the one piece of information that was required to heal us all, you kept it to yourself!”

Her temper, strained to its breaking point, flared up. “That is not true! We all know now, and I’m afraid I don’t see this family being any less broken than it was.”

“It’s still broken because you betrayed my trust! I trusted you to be the good daughter – you can’t know how many times I’ve told myself over these past five years that I might have lost Sara, but at least I still have Laurel. Laurel understands, I thought, Laurel can take care of herself, and she can focus on helping Dinah get better while I find Sara. The whole debacle with the Duke of Starling aside, you were supposed to be the perfect daughter, the one that never caused me a moment’s grief, not someone who conspires to keep secrets like this from your parents!”

“I never wanted to be your perfect daughter! Not at the expense of my father, my mother, my sister – but all of you left! You all thought that ‘Laurel is strong, Laurel will be all right’. I have not been allowed to fall apart for five whole years, forced to keep all of my resentment and my grief bottled up within me, with no conceivable outlet save for slinging insults at Ollie when he came back. I can’t even hate you, because you are my father.

“How could you blame me for Sara’s decision? She decided, father, of her own accord, when she left, and when she chooses to stay away now. Do you think I’m the first to try persuading her to return? Ollie’s tried for three whole years!”

Sometime during the exchange, she had begun shouting, and he had leapt to his feet, rage materialising in the red of his face, the tense hold of his shoulders.

“Poppycock! Balderdash! I should have known that that blasted blackguard was involved in all of this – you’ve been taken in by him again!”

“I have not!”

“This is all his fault – I should have known! If the duke had not been introduced to this family, none of this would have happened, my daughter would not have - ” He suddenly broke off, his mouth hanging open and his eyes intumescent as he swayed slightly.

“Father?” Laurel asked in alarm, bringing a hand to his upper arm to steady him.

“My daughter…” he choked, a hand coming up to his chest to clutch at his heart as he pitched backwards.

His seat caught his frame and prevented him from crashing to the ground, but Laurel could see his face turning blue, his breathing growing very laboured as if he could not get air into his lungs.

“Hilton!” she cried, her nerveless fingers fumbling at the buttons on his coat, as she struggled to open it and help him breathe. His hands were hanging by his sides like dead weights, his eyes unfocused.

She called again. “Hilton!” Her voice was shaky and she could feel tears creeping up on her. Why was the butler taking so long to arrive?

“Yes, Miss Lance?”

“Get a doctor for the viscount at once. And send for Lord Thomas Merlyn. Quickly!”

She barely registered the hasty patter of his footsteps as he left to do her bidding. Her only thoughts were that she could not lose her father for real, and that she needed Tommy by her side.

* * *

“What are you wearing?”

It was a bit of a specious question, because Oliver could see all too well what she was wearing as she and Diggle rode to their rendezvous point.

Felicity’s brow furrowed slightly, but she dismounted, not very gracefully, from the mare she was riding. She removed the hat that her hair had been tucked into, and her hair emerged, dressed in a queue that would have looked severe and masculine on any other person. “Roy was kind enough to find me appropriate attire after I told him I wanted to ride.”

He had bought her a riding habit, he was very sure of it. She had not needed to approach his stable boy, whom he was certainly going to reprimand when he saw him later that day. And the attire was most definitely not appropriate.

“You are wearing breeches,” he pointed out, trying to fix his attention to her face alone to no avail. He could see every sweet curve of her legs and derrière, in excruciating detail thanks to the tight fit of buckskin on her thighs. He had thought that the previous instance when she wore his nightgown and it rode up slightly had left little to the imagination, but it appeared his imagination was not as good as he once believed it to be. He did not really want to know just how conservative and wrong he had been in his estimates, when he had let his mind dwell upon what was above those calves he had witnessed in his weaker moments.

That was a lie: a part of him did very much want to know how wrong he was, much as he was attempting very hard to deny it now.

“Yes, well, I couldn’t very well ride astride in a dress.”

He closed his eyes. It was no use, he had heard her clearly and the image of her in breeches was seared permanently onto his memory, not to mention the fact that she had said the words ‘ride astride’ out loud to him. “Why didn’t you and Diggle take a hack?” He sounded strangled.

With his eyes closed, he now heard the curtness in her voice, and knew that she was still harbouring some resentment on his account. “I needed some air.”

He heard her walk away and the sound of Diggle dismounting before him. He opened his eyes and saw his valet leading two horses to where he had left Devil.

Upon catching sight of him, Diggle raised a hand and said, “I claim no responsibility for the manner in which we arrived. She seemed to be in a mood after you left, and I did not want to cross her when she said that the fastest way to travel was to ride. If it helps, I made sure we avoided crowded areas, and I think most passers-by would only have seen two men riding out of town at top speed.”

The words were familiar. What had Anatoli said about F. M. Smoak when he had first spoken to Oliver about her? That she was not to be crossed.

Oliver could only shake his head – what blinded idiot looked at her and saw a man? “Do you know why she’s upset?”

Diggle frowned with confusion. “Weren’t you the last to speak to her before she came to tell me we were to meet here at three? Was she all right then?”

 _Bloody hell_. That meant it was indeed something he said or failed to say which had piqued her ire, and that he was right when he suspected that he had left something out in his apology to her before he went to collect his cravat from Isabel’s, narrowly avoiding his mother’s dogged attempts to engage him in conversation as he left Starling House.

Oliver did not want to deal with this, not after Isabel had just told him that she was afraid that their affair had been more than obvious to the _ton_ and that she feared it was going to affect her standing in their estimation for being less than respectable.

He knew she expected a proposal then, and he had not known what to say beyond an apology for the fact that he was needed urgently on the outskirts of London, and needed to continue that line of conversation another day.

As usual, Diggle saw more than was said, and his tone was mellowed with understanding as he said, “I’ll wait here until a groom comes. You better follow Felicity.”

Felicity had already entered the house without him, and the faint smell of rotting flesh was immediately apparent to him as he joined her in the drawing room. A woman wearing a bloodstained apron was holding both of Felicity’s hands, their excited chatter filling the room and stilling at his approach.

“Caitlin, this is…” Felicity trailed off in uncertainty as her friend tilted her head in question, a brown brow raised at his intrusion.

They had never discussed how Oliver should be introduced, and he finished the sentence for her, “Oliver Queene at your service, ma’am.” The omission of his title was intentional; he did not want to answer questions about why a duke was interested in the grisly details of a murder.

“Of course,” said Felicity, a little too quickly, as all who were present noticed. “Mr Queene, this is Caitlin Snow. She hails from an illustrious family of physicians.”

“The black sheep of the family for being a surgeon,” said the woman warily, tucking a stray curl of her brown hair behind her ear. “Though it is not as if any institution in England would have accepted the likes of a woman.”

“My cousin graduated from Edinburgh as a doctor,” said Oliver, hoping to transcend her prickly exterior and expedite the time he had to spend here. “I highly doubt Ronnie had an iota of the experience you likely gain in a week before he graduated with honours.”

His ploy worked. “Might you be speaking of a Dr Ronald Raymond?” asked the woman, visibly relaxing.

The sound of male voices conversing prevented his reply, and his irritation spiked again as Mr Allen exclaimed, “Your grace!” upon seeing him and stopping short outside the drawing room with his dark haired companion.

* * *

Barry’s recognition of Oliver had caused him to revert to the gruff persona he very often lapsed into when he was not called upon to be civil by the _ton_. Felicity barely refrained from wincing as she outlined the accusation launched at Oliver to explain why a peer of the realm wanted to inspect the Hyde Park murder corpses, omitting all references to his identity as the Arrow or her own questions about why his father had left such a blacksmith’s puzzle of clues to his son, and the mystery of his five years away.

“Am I mistaken in thinking that your grace is the duke that returned from the dead?” asked Cisco, who too had the propensity to think out loud. She had never noticed before how excruciating it was for others to watch this unfold before them. “The one who disappeared for five years and then came back to open a club with a person who goes by ‘Arrow’, and who now holds much of London in debt to your club…”

“That will be enough,” cut in Caitlin, to Felicity’s relief. “Your grace, I trust Felicity and if she brought you here to consult my findings, then I shall do as she requests. Will your grace come down to my workshop with me?”

“My man is still waiting outside with my horses,” replied Oliver. “If you could send someone to relieve him of his duties, I will be grateful if you could begin.”

That was arranged, and they broke out into smaller conversations while they waited. Barry and Oliver alike shot her a questioning glance about the other person’s appearance in the room. She strode over to Barry – she was still put out by her own visceral reaction to Oliver’s mention of the countess after breakfast and did not want to talk to him as of yet – to explain what happened after she went to Slade’s house party.

Cisco was protesting the swat that Caitlin gave him for his mention of Oliver’s background with “Don’t you read the scandal sheets? This is common knowledge across the country!” as Diggle strode into the room to join them.

Once again Felicity made the introductions, before she decided she had better explain how she was related to everyone in the room.

“I’m currently helping the duke with a translation problem in his late father’s notes, and I met his valet when I met his grace. Caitlin is a Bird of Prey, in control of the entire resurrection trade in the country, and we are in charge of producing new identities – she provides the body and I provide the relevant papers whenever Sara asks.

“Cisco is a gunsmith and an expert in the production of weapons, and he is the person we consult whenever there is a need to identify the provenance of a weapon or for supplies at Canary Court.

“I met Barry while he was still at Cambridge. I helped him with a translation problem then; he introduced me to Caitlin and Cisco, and we’ve been friends since. He, Cisco and Caitlin investigate crimes together, rather like an independent and highly skilled Bow Street on their own. I should also mention that he helped me maintain the secrecy of my Felix Sherwood persona whenever I took commissions that were not exactly legal.”

It was the bare details she had provided, based on what she knew of each party and what they were willing to share, until Oliver saw fit to add his side of the story.

“My father was murdered five years ago, and I returned as the Arrow to find his murderer. I suspect that the person who did so is trying to target me now, and the Hyde Park murders are a message he’s trying to send to me.”

That too was an account missing many other details, but as he spoke she understood why he had tried so hard to engage her services at the beginning. When she had first accepted his offer she had done so out of desperation and an uncanny feeling that he could be trusted, despite her desire to never accept a job with little background information again following the souring of her contract with Slade.

She had not been wrong about his trustworthiness. She gave a start as she recalled the pain he was in during his nightmare in his club, the desperation in his voice as he cried out for his father, and the quiet resignation as he pondered the futility of endeavouring to fight against whatever it was that had taken his father and innocence away from him. Oliver caught her movement, and they held each other’s gaze for what felt like a long while as he finished his last word.

Barry’s expression was that of abject sympathy, a reaction owing to his own desire to find the man who murdered his mother when he was a child, the driving force for his unorthodox hobby. “We will exhaust every resource to help with your grace’s search,” he pledged.

Oliver’s face had darkened after she crossed over to Barry’s side, but he managed to sound polite as he said, “Then I would appreciate it if you could show me the bodies.”

They all followed Caitlin’s lead into the bowels of the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is actually rather inaccurate for Diggle and Felicity to call Oliver 'the duke' when speaking or to think of him as such - he should be 'His Grace' to them whenever they speak of him, but given that they call him Oliver on a regular basis, I did away with the clumsiness of that. Barricity was kept to a minimum here, but Jealous!Oliver is going to be further incensed given that Felicity's dressed as a boy and Barry can see her every curve. I'm glad that she gets to have a ponytail in this chapter, even though realistically I agree with Oliver that nobody will look at a woman like Emily Bett Rickards and think of a boy just because she's wearing trousers.
> 
> Quentin's blaming of Laurel will ruffle some feathers. To clarify, he's lashing out in his hurt and poor Laurel is taking a beating on account of that. Just like how Oliver used to get the brunt of her anger. I wanted to show that Laurel had some self-awareness of her own behaviour (following Tommy pointing out to her what she needed to hear, of course), and this was a conversation I thought she sorely needed to have on the show. 
> 
> I didn't find very much when I tried to look up a grammar book of that period when I sought to explain her thinking process in solving the code, just as I couldn't determine whether natural sciences was a course (I'm pretty sure it's natural history) in Cambridge when Barry was attending. When I wrote that Barry and Felicity's meeting was a whole story on its own in a previous chapter, it was always my headcanon that she helped him with his extra Latin homework and realised he was solving a small crime in Ely, which is why he didn't do the work to begin with. I haven't had the chance to add this in the story somewhere but Felicity used to do more than coding and forgeries. When she lived in Ely she used to help the boys with their homework for a fee and that was how she met Cooper.
> 
> With all the excitement and emotional drama I find that there's very little opportunity for me to show characters actually explaining details to each other. Felicity and Oliver have never had a proper opportunity to talk about why he wants her to decipher his father's messages so badly, and I thought it would also be nice to show that she just trusted him, ever since their conversation in Chapter 11. In some sense writing this chapter was a little strange for me because I felt that Flarrow was happening before Oliver could really be said to be a hero in this timeline - all he's done is try to solve his father's murder. It deviates from the point in the source material that Barry looks up to Oliver as a mentor-figure for crimefighting, though I suppose I could arrange for that to happen were I to get around to reading books on science in the 19th century and then writing a Flash spin-off where Oliver's skills are what Barry needs for finding out what happened to Nora. (No, I have a degree to obtain!) I anticipate questions among you about what it was that bothered Felicity about Oliver's Cinderella joke. If I can't explain it in a following chapter, I might write a oneshot to show her perspective of that conversation. Otherwise on with the murder plot!


	25. Confession

Past its nondescript façade, the Fields of Fancy was one of the oldest establishments among the grandest London had to offer to any deep-pocketed man in search of a night of wild abandon. Its pedigree showed in its furnishings insofar they spoke of opulence and not of age – it was custom to redecorate each time a new madam took over.

McKenna Hall had aligned her preferences with the Palladian craze that had struck London, although her private rooms retained their Oriental inspiration, from the folding screens of silk to the thick draperies that covered the walls. The woman herself wore a turban, and was reclined on a settee while perusing papers when Roy was shown into the room.

She raised her eyes at his arrival, taking in the Starling livery that he had appropriated for his purpose this afternoon. “I should have known that his grace would not have come in person.”

Roy’s hand was tucked deep in his pockets, the slip of paper sent by the madam to the duke in his fist. “I apologise if you are disappointed, Madam Hall.”

“His choice of messenger is at least as pleasing to the eye.”

When Roy did not respond, she put down her papers and sat up. “I see you are just as reticent. Very well, the information about Stellmoor as requested. That is the name by which a man also known as Simon Lacroix conducts his business in the underworld. Despite being the bastard son of a lower noblewoman, Lacroix found favour with the exiled Princess Marie-Thérèse until recently – I believe that there were allegations of his supporting the French First Empire, though presumably they cannot be true in England’s estimation if he has remained in London since.”

Roy ran over her words in his mind, committing them to memory so he could report back to the duke later. His instructions had been given just after breakfast, following which he had been detained by a crisis of the equine variety – some idiot had mixed up the blankets and risked spreading the devil’s nuts to all the horses in the stable. He had only a couple of hours to locate the man by himself if he wished to make the time when Lady Thea would wish to ride, failing which it would be necessary to deploy someone else and delay the process of discovery.

The madam had paused to think, her face screwing in concentration as she said, “His grace will want to know that Lacroix is an archer. And that he’s recently taken up boxing at the Jackson’s Saloon, on Tuesdays and Fridays. That’s all I was able to find out, assuming his grace doesn’t care to know what sort of preferences Lacroix has in the bedroom…”

Roy handed her the box under his arm hastily, the second object that had come with the set of instructions he had been given. McKenna Hall opened it with graceful fingers, and the corner of her mouth rose as she picked up a pressed lily with bluish-pink petals. In her other hand was a card signed by the duke, clearly addressed to his ‘ _Siroi lily_ ’.

“…scoundrel,” she muttered, not without humour, dropping the card into the box.

Roy took that as his cue to leave. The servant that had brought him to the room was not waiting outside, but he easily found his way down into the basement and then through the iron-wrought gate surrounding the servant’s entrance onto the main street.

He felt the invasive weight of a person’s regard almost immediately, the hairs on the back of his neck standing with his realisation.

Roy bit the inside of his cheek – he had fancied himself giving into paranoia when he first sensed that he was being followed when he left Starling House, but the resumption of the watch on him following his interlude in the Fields of Fancy only meant that he had been unmistaken then.

Keeping his face straight ahead, he took a few steps towards the general direction of Bond Street, bending over at the third bootscrape he passed as if to pick something up. As he doubled over he swept the periphery behind his person a quick look in search of his interloper.

 _In the black hack._ It was crawling along at a speed far too slow for the pace of traffic at this time of the day, since Pall Mall had yet to be filled with carousing aristocrats, and while Roy could not be sure if the hack had followed him from Grosvenor Square, he was certain it was following him now.

He thought briefly about the route he was intending to take, and straightened to break into a brisk walk. Every reflective surface that he passed was a means of checking his theory, and sure enough, the vehicle had picked up speed with him.

Roy smiled. If it was a chase they wanted, he was not going to gratify their wishes.

He followed the pavement past the row of buildings at a constant crushing pace, before turning abruptly into a passage leading to the mews behind one of the townhouses and pressing his body against the wall. The dark shadow cast by the building behind him obscured him from view while he waited for his interloper to follow, curling his hand around the handle of the first sharp object he could find his pocket.

The black hack came round the corner into the passage, and Roy leapt towards the door, whipping it open and throwing his body into its confines. Bringing his armed hand to the sole passenger’s neck, he grabbed at her shoulder roughly and leaned his weight into her person to prevent her from moving.

“Why are you following – Lady Thea!”

He stepped back in shock, bumping his head on the roof of the hack as he did so. Her attention was fixated on the weapon that he brandished at her, her mouth falling open in disbelief.

“Did you just threaten me with a pencil?”

His head was swimming with the impact of its contact with the roof, but he found it in him to quip as he fell into the seat opposite her, “It counts among the most precious things I own, my lady.”

She let out what sounded like a huff or a bark of very begrudging laughter, tossing her head slightly as she raised a gloved hand to touched her violated shoulder gingerly. He resisted the urge to personally check her body for injuries, limiting his concern to “I’m dreadfully sorry.”

“You’re not a stable boy,” she said, before he could ask her why she was traversing the streets of London unaccompanied and following him.

“I beg your pardon, my lady, but I do believe I am. His grace saw fit to continue my employment in his stables.” _Among other things_.

“The way you speak is indication enough. And the livery that you wear today – I notice you have not told me that you’ve been promoted to footman. I asked the stable master today, and he said that Ollie sends you out for various errands and that you don’t actually spend much time in the stables. What sort of errands have you been running?”

“I mean no disrespect, my lady, but I’m afraid I cannot answer your question without betraying his grace’s privacy.”

She did not like his reply; that much he could see in the way her dark eyes flashed at him, although she did not press the issue, which freed him from the burden of choosing between the man that had given him purpose in his life and the woman that captivated him so. She was dressed for morning calls, from the elaborate bonnet that shrouded her eyes in a shadow should she look slightly downwards, to the blue confection that adorned her lovely form.

“What brings you to Pall Mall unaccompanied, my lady?” Roy asked.

“I’m not unaccompanied. You are right here with me, even if you disappeared into a bawdy-house for a surprisingly short amount of time considering the effort it takes to disrobe and then dress properly.”

“I did not – I wasn’t there to…” He had raised both his hands, and the ridiculous sight of his pencil stilled the incoherent verbiage that was about to be espoused from his mouth at her observation. “Never mind that. Would your ladyship be averse to returning to Starling House?” The Duchess of Starling would likely have his head were they to be discovered in this part of London. What was Lady Thea thinking?

“Yes, I do believe I would be. I did not want to pay any calls today, and I refuse to be cooped up in the house. Where were you intending to go after this?”

“Nowhere,” he lied, studying her face for indications as to her purposes.

Lady Thea raised an imperious brow, and rose from her seat to place a hand on the door. “Very well then, I suppose I shall have to saunter into whatever establishment it was that you just frequented to discover what a bawdy-house looks like to make my jaunt to this part of town worthwhile.”

He closed a hand over hers in alarm, blurting, “Bond Street, my lady! I was going to Number 13, to Jackson’s Saloon.”

Her eyes fell upon on the way his hand enveloped hers, and he released her immediately, dropping his hand into his lap as though he had been stung.

It was likely because he had never touched her of his own accord, he thought. Their every contact had been limited to the way she leant her weight on him slightly every time she climbed onto her mare, a strictly professional touch that lasted no longer than necessary.

How ironic it was that after a short-lived adolescence where he had pursued all manner of relationships, even with women as beautiful as Kory, he would find himself treasuring the mere brushing of hands with this _gadji_ woman before him.

Lady Thea’s expression betrayed none of her thoughts about what had just happened, and she merely said, “Well then, Harper, you may accompany me to Jackson’s Saloon and run whatever errand it is that you intended to.”

That had been her purpose, though he was not quite sure if she would carry out the aforementioned threat to enter the Fields of Fancy in broad daylight as a well-bred lady. There was something worrying her; Lady Thea always behaved like this when she was bothered about something.

“As you wish, my lady,” he sighed, leaning out briefly to give directions to the coachman. They travelled in silence for a while, Lady Thea’s head bent towards the windowpane in the door to watch the passing scenery.

“I did it last night,” she finally said, as they entered Mayfair. He waited for her to continue. “I tossed two drinks at Lady Charlotte – you do remember the little minx that called me a ‘fatherless, brotherless hoyden’? Now I’m not the perfect Lady Thea anymore, and the worst thing about it all is that I don’t even care.”

His mind reeled as he tried to understand her. “I thought the lady that insulted you as such was a Lady Harriet…”

“Lady Charlotte said it to Lady Harriet, and Lady Harriet agreed,” she corrected. “In any case, the hostility that has been simmering under all the pretty smiles they were showing is no longer held back by my pristine reputation.” She looked meaningfully at him, waiting for his reply.

Roy bit his tongue to prevent himself from asking a stupid question. He was accustomed to Lady Thea breaking out into a tirade of which he could make little head or tail of when he first listened.

“Your ladyship implied it does not matter,” he finally said.

“Yes, it does not signify, though I was quite surprised to encounter barbs from others not present at the soirée when I followed mother to the Wests’ today – that was before I reported a headache and returned home to see you leaving.”

He nodded encouragingly; she had fallen into a silence and was picking at the embroidered bits of her skirts.

“I used to hate all the whispers before it happened. Mother always emphasised the importance of remaining in control, that the _ton_ was waiting to eviscerate me insofar I gave them the opportunity. But when Lady Charlotte sniped at me yesterday, all I could think was that the effort of keeping up my milksop miss personality was not worth the approval of the lot of them, when they gossiped about me behind my back and were bold enough to insult me to my face.

“Do you know that I’ve never really had a proper conversation with anyone? Beyond Miss West and Laurel. Miss West is perfectly lovely and Laurel was always something of an elder sister. But I’ve never had a proper conversation with someone of my age. I’m always invited, of course, no one can afford to cut the daughter of a duke with the money of Midas – pardon my crassness – but I couldn’t say that there is one person in the _ton_ whom I can say this to as I speak to you right now.”

At that she chuckled, a savage sound at the back of her throat. “It occurs to me that you are forced to listen to me only because I hold your life in my hands and my brother pays you wages. In any case, hear this well: I acted badly yesterday, because I decided that I wanted to control what they were going to criticise me for. I confess I enjoyed the tossing, right when I did it, but I’m not so sure now…Mother is not pleased, and Ollie’s putting a good face on it mostly because he doesn’t give a single whit about what the _ton_ thinks, which is all very well for him – he’s a man – but apart from Miss Smoak, there has been no one whom I can talk to, and she’s not even at home right now.

“I don’t know what I think about all of this, Harper. Will you tell me that I’m still precious and darling, even if the _ton_ decides to hurl rocks at me?”

From the conflicted look she was giving him, he thought that she too was trying to pretend that her actions did not matter to her. Every time she had chattered on to him about her day while riding, he had always sensed a loneliness that was rooted deep within her, one that underscored her decisions.

Roy looked at Lady Thea, his heart breaking as he said firmly, “You are precious, my lady. And darling. And I will never let the _ton_ ’s stones come into contact with your ladyship’s person.”

Her red lips twisted into a smile; he could tell that she thought his words were merely that of obedience from a servant with a capricious mistress. At the stop of the hack she tilted her head towards the window, and she rose and exited the vehicle before he could stop her. “Time to pay Gentleman Jackson a visit, boy.”

“My lady, it might be best for your ladyship to wait in the hack while I - ”

“Piffle,” she bit out. “Why would a stable boy dressed as a footman stride into an establishment such as this, unless his master were to accompany him?” She shot him a sly look as he came to her side. “Unless you were intending to admit that you are no stable boy?”

Roy sighed and gave the driver instructions to wait, before he knocked on the front door instead of the servant’s entrance, as he had initially planned. With her presence there, it was necessary to keep the investigation as moderate as possible for her safety – an extraction of clients’ particulars was out of the question tonight. When the door was opened, she retrieved her card from her reticule and was led into a waiting room with two exits.

“Hurry along and finish what bodily business you have at once, Harper. I have no time for your dithering,” Lady Thea said loudly, as she sat on a settee and inspected the contents of her reticule with a look of extreme boredom on her face.

Roy left the waiting room and dashed down the corridor, pausing at each door for the sound of movement to mark out a rudimentary mental map of the ground floor. With the aid of a helpful servant he located the room designed as a men’s retiring room, and he stood next to a chamber pot for a couple of counts before he calmly walked back to the waiting room, allowing his ears to confirm his impression of the floor’s layout with his path.

A man wearing an eye-patch was standing in the doorway furthest from where he stood. Roy rushed to Lady Thea’s side via the nearest entrance, coming to a stop next to her so that he could see both her body and the man clearly, and react with the advantage of distance on his side should the man take but one step closer to his lady.

Lady Thea had her face tilted away from the intruder, as she announced haughtily, “Harper, kindly remind this gentleman that we have not been introduced.”

The man laughed at that. “Quality, from the sound of it. I only asked for your identity because your colouring reminds me very much of an aristocrat I once worked with – the Earl of Merlyn. You don’t happen to be related, do you, miss?”

She did not reply or look at him, and the man turned to Roy instead. His eyes indicated that he had seen the speed at which Roy had crossed the room to Lady Thea’s side, and that he understood the implication of the position Roy had taken.

“I could use a man with your reflexes, Mr Harper - wasn’t it? I shan’t vex your mistress anymore today, but do call at my residence five houses east from here should you ever decide you want to be more than a footman.”

The man left, and the eponymous John “Gentleman” Jackson came to answer all of Lady Thea’s queries about the possibility and propriety of her taking boxing lessons. She was a natural at producing conversation, and Roy waited for his opportunity to inquire about Lacroix, which only arose when the location of her lessons became at question.

“My lady,” said Roy. “Far be it for me to be impertinent, but perhaps it might be better if lessons are conducted in the house? With all due respect to Mr Jackson here, his clientele may not always match someone of your stature.”

“Let me reassure your ladyship on that count,” said Jackson. “A private session may be arranged, and I am loathe to ignore any preferences indicated when most of my students hail from the upper classes - why, the gentleman that usually comes today is linked to nobility. French nobility, to be sure, but nobility all the same.”

“Nobility?” repeated Lady Thea, her eyes darting to Roy and then back to focus on Jackson. She had caught the flicker of interest in his expression, for she leaned forward slightly, and said, “How very dashing. I’ve never met a French noble before. Will you introduce me to him next Tuesday, Mr Jackson?”

“Most certainly – Mr Lacroix comes on Fridays as well, my lady.”

“That’s very kind of you to divulge, Mr Jackson. I shall contact you shortly about lessons. You have been most helpful today, but I’m afraid my next appointment calls.”

She played the pampered lady to perfection, and never once did the supercilious moue leave her lips until they both entered the privacy of the hack and began their journey towards Grosvenor Square.

“That was a most odious man,” declared Lady Thea, as she arranged her skirts so as not to crumple their delicate material. “Wouldn’t you say? The one with an eye-patch.”

Roy’s mind was on consolidating the information he had gathered. “Indeed, my lady,” he said absently.

She watched him for a moment, and then said, “He sought to poach you from right under my nose, Harper. Do tell me that you won’t ever leave my employ and abandon me?”

He could have reminded her then that she knew of his past crimes, and that one word from her would send him to the gallows. He could have said that she would one day marry and have a rank of her own, beyond the courtesy address as lady extended to her, and that a poor stable boy with no property or birth had no place in that life.

Instead he smiled ruefully and said, “Never, my lady. I’ll stay as long as your ladyship wishes.”

The smile she returned him was not exuberant but complex, as impenetrable as the slate green of her eyes. There were no further words exchanged as they returned to Starling House, their involvement in each other’s afternoons to be a secret from the rest of the world.

* * *

He had thought he was too late when he arrived at Lance House, perspiration forming on his back from the dash he had made across Mayfair to circumvent the stillness of traffic at this fashionable hour of the day.

The butler’s face unhelpfully betrayed nothing as he showed Tommy into the parlour, where he was to wait with only his anxiety for company for a member of the family to receive him. Tommy took the time to catch his breath and set his appearance to rights.

The messenger sent from Lance House had caught him just as he stepped into the entrance hall of his own family’s townhouse, his attention on the troubling state of his finances and the call that he had just paid to Lady Harriet Shane. Before he could even speak his arm had been seized, a tale of how the man had been scouring all the regular haunts of the Merry Merlyn for a good two hours before he found him had been recounted, and Tommy had only heard that Laurel needed him before he left immediately, his heart propelling his feet into motion towards her.

It did not take long for her familiar gait to be heard, and he registered only the paleness of her face before she ran directly towards him.

He stroked her hair gently, murmuring words of comfort, until she was ready to talk. This was new between them, perhaps a result of what had transpired in their trip to Bristol, and though he was holding her in a way that he had only henceforth dreamt about, he paid little attention to the soft curves that were pressed against him or the smell of roses in her hair as she held tightly to his waist.

“Father has stabilised,” Laurel finally said against the lapels of his coat. “The doctor said that he’s got a – a heart condition, and that he must not be upset, or else even regular bleeding won’t save him.”

She pulled away to look up into his face, and Tommy saw that she had been crying. “I’ll write Sara for you, if you don’t wish to.”

“I will do it myself. But not now.” She realised the position they were in and she released her hold on him, taking a step back to put some distance between them. “Thank you for coming. I’m sorry about… I don’t know what came over me.”

Tommy looked at her, and silently acknowledged that he had to be honest with both the woman he was currently courting and the woman to whom his heart belonged.

He was always going to love Laurel, even if he married another woman out of economic necessity. Lady Harriet had to know that she would never come first, only a distant second.

As for Laurel – he did not know whether this was a good time to tell her that he loved her. But he did want her to smile for once in this trying day.

“Do Lord or Lady Lance require you at present?” he asked.

Her brow furrowed in confusion. “No, not right now, but I do have to ensure that they take supper at seven…”

He glanced at the clock. Seven was two hours away. “Then fetch your maid and your bonnet, Laurel, I have two surprises for you.”

She gave him a nervous laugh as she emerged from the stairwell to join him in the entrance hall, Joanna in tow. “You know I’m not fond of surprises, Tommy…”

“At least one of these surprises will help you feel all better,” he said, helping her into the Lance carriage he had arranged to borrow for this trip. “Just so you know, I find your lack of faith in me disturbing.”

She could summon the energy to give him a weak smile, and she said, “Then let’s limit the day’s surprises to just that one. Mustn’t exceed the quota, you know.”

“The quota shall be duly respected,” he nodded, joining her and her maid in the carriage and deciding to defer his confession of love just for a day more at least.

It felt natural to say little as they left Mayfair and progressed into Spitalfields. Laurel was tired, after all, and more than one time did she stare listlessly out of the window in the course of their journey.

Tommy shot Joanna a questioning glance, from his seat opposite the women.

 _Miss Lance didn’t sleep last night_ , mouthed the abigail, and he felt a twinge of worry latch upon his heart. He should have spoken to her at the soirée, even if that would have been entirely inimical to his goals that evening.

They arrived presently at the abandoned factory, and he could tell that Laurel did not understand as he led her past the rows of broken looms, up to the little room which the factory foreman had used as an office. She had a little uncertain smile pasted onto her lips, the expression she always made when she did not want to upset someone for being less than pleased with their offering.

He cleared his throat. “Welcome, Miss Lance, to the Lady Merlyn Hospital, soon to be the most reputable institution for taking in and educating young children, mostly because we will give old Captain Coram a run for his money, no disrespect to the late philanthropist himself.

“At present the place looks rather rickety, but that presents little obstacle when we have the power of our imaginations at hand. You see before you the schoolroom, and I do believe that food can be doled out right in that corner there.”

Laurel appeared transfixed on the area that he had pointed at, and a wide smile was appearing on her face.

“Dormitories can be built where the foreman’s lodgings used to be, and I think we may look into expanding the medical operations once we’ve gotten the whole place running for a couple of years – there’s room at the back to erect a proper permanent clinic.”

She had not uttered a word yet; though he could see her taking in the place, see her mind working as she made plans about how to organise the space before her.

“Oh, Tommy,” laughed Laurel with delight as she ran a hand on the slightly rusty windowsill in front of them, her mind working quickly as she considered how to organise the space before her. “What have you done?”

“Nothing really,” he said, watching her take in the place with contentment. “I admit freely to plagiarising all the ideas on the plans from you and to be honest, I wanted to realise your initial vision before showing it to you, but this way is better – you can make any modifications as you wish before the works begin.”

She turned to him sharply. “Me?”

“It’s all yours, Laurel. The land this old factory is sitting on has already been put in a trust for you – I spoke with your father about it on Sunday, and we’re just down to signing the final paperwork.”

“But you’re naming it after your mother… The next Lady Merlyn should be the patroness of this hospital…”

“My father is not going to remarry anytime soon, notwithstanding the fact that no woman should be fool enough to take him,” he said. “And as for me… Well, my Lady Merlyn shall just have to be content that I met another woman with a greater sense of imagination and compassion than her first.”

It was a lie; he had always intended to name the hospital as such when he first had the idea because he dreamed that she would be his Lady Merlyn.

He saw her happiness deflate, and she walked away from the window, down the stairs that would take her down to the ground floor. He followed closely.

“That is unrealistic, Tommy. Lady Harriet won’t like it, I’m very sure, and I can’t conceive of a woman in the _ton_ who will.”

“This is not meant to be a realistic, practical endeavour. This is your dream, Laurel, and I want to help you achieve it.”

Her laughter was a little more self-deprecating now, as she said, “At the expense of forsaking your dear wife’s opinion before you even wed her? Tell me, Tommy, you are courting Lady Harriet now, aren’t you?”

The conversation’s direction was going awry; he gave her a grim nod in confirmation.

“As I thought. And have you informed Lady Harriet that her dowry is going to be used to fund another woman’s endeavours, as soon as you can get your hands on it? It’s not going to be my money – you know that my father tied it up in a trust until I married when we all believed that I would be a duchess, and it certainly is not going to be your money, after the earl’s recent expression of disappointment at whatever he thinks you have done now.

“What is Lady Harriet going to think, Tommy, when you tell her that, and I know you will tell her before you propose because that is just the sort of person you are! What will she think when the man who wishes to marry her simultaneously seems to be holding out a great passion for a woman he’s known all his life? The bonds of friendship do not extend to what you have naïvely painted for me, and I say this as your friend right now that it cannot work, especially when the implications of it are manifestly untrue.”

Having said her piece she glared at him, and stormed out to the waiting carriage outside, not even looking to see if her maid accompanied her from where Joanna had been loitering at the entrance of the factory.

Tommy had been left standing in the centre of the factory’s ground floor, her tirade still ringing in his ears. As Joanna entered the Lance carriage behind her mistress, he raised his head to look at the vehicle into which Laurel had disappeared in her temper.

He squared his jaw and followed after Laurel, who was making a point to not look at him at all, not once in their silent journey back to Mayfair. For once he did not understand the reason for her sudden flare of temper, beyond the obvious pressures that other aspects of her life were exerting on her. When they came to a stop in front of Merlyn House, he did not get up and leave immediately like he knew she expected him to, by way of the other door out of which she was not staring.

“What if it were true?”

She did not respond immediately, beyond a quick glance at her maid and then back at him. Joanna obligingly got up and exited the vehicle to wait outside, leaving them alone to their hostility.

“What if what were true? The fact that you have become a fortune hunter with no scruples, even for a fortune hunter?”

On another day he would have cracked a joke at that sentence. He was not even smiling at her now, as he said, “That I have been holding out a great passion for you over the years.”

She looked at him incredulously. “That is not funny in the slightest, Tommy, and you really should reconsider your sense of what is appropriate if you think that you can joke about - ”

“I’m not joking,” he interrupted her. “I have loved you for most of my life, beyond the bounds of friendship, beyond what has any other man should have allowed himself to feel for his best friend’s fiancée. I loved you from the start, and although you know I’ve never once begrudged Ollie for having a father that loved him, a mother that was there for him and a sister to spoil, the one thing I have never been able to fully accept was that he had you.”

Her mouth had fallen open, her head shaking slightly as she said slowly, “That’s facetious. You pursue scores of women all the time. You were thinking of marrying another woman.”

He had not made a jest, and yet he could flash her a smile now, a very small and sad one. “Because I couldn’t get you out of my mind. And because I know a futile endeavour when I see one.”

“I-I’ve just been an unobtainable goal for you. It’s not actually a great passion, just your mind wondering what a woman that you spend so much time around without actually bedding would taste like.”

At that he laughed, not unkindly. “It’s not just that, Laurel. Trust me, I’ve gone down every single one of the paths you are considering right now, and each time the conclusion is the same: I am irrevocably in love with you. I’m sorry if I upset you today – it wasn’t my intention at all to tell you today, and I understand fully if you don’t want to talk to me for a spell. Send a letter to my residence if you decide you do want to talk, when you feel ready. I won’t propose to Lady Harriet until the end of the Season, in the event you should decide that a loan would be more appropriate.”

He exited the carriage and tipped his hat to Joanna, before looking for what could be the last time at the woman he loved. She was perched stiffly at the edge of her seat, a finger running over the row of buttons on her gloves as she looked back at him, eyes widened with the shock she undoubtedly felt.

“Good day, Laurel. I hope your parents get better.”

He turned and upon entering Merlyn House, nearly bumped into his father, who was wearing full evening dress. At the earl’s side was a tall man who wore a patch over his right eye, which inspected his appearance with casual interest.

“No need to introduce me, father,” Tommy said. “What good are connections when you’re a profound disappointment and a failure anyway?”

He sauntered off in search of brandy, whistling the first inane ditty that came to mind as loudly as he could to drown out the world. 

* * *

 Oliver knew he had behaved badly at the surgeon’s house, especially when he ended the visit with the line, “My mission must be a closely guarded secret known only to a few, and if it were to get out, it’ll endanger my family, my friends, and it will embolden my enemies to retaliate at me through them.”

It had just inexplicably grated at him to see the casual way ‘Barry’ Allen approached Felicity, and how he stuck by her side throughout the experience, and the irreverent way that his comrades conducted their operations despite the gravity of the situation before them – barring Miss Caitlin Snow alone, of course. Then there was the matter of what he had seen lying on the table in the basement of her house. He held a hand to his temples and inhaled sharply, fancying he could still smell the residual stench of rotting flesh even though he had bathed quite thoroughly the first thing upon returning to Starling House.

Diggle was the first to arrive, carrying a change of clothes for Oliver as was requested, so he could spend the night in Verdant. He barely noticed his valet putting the clothes on one of the side tables in the observation room before crossing over to the glass paneling by which Oliver stood.

“Do you want to talk about what happened today?”

Oliver made no answer and merely looked out at the empty gaming tables below as his staff readied the room for the night’s activities.

“You’re upset, Oliver, beyond the worry you should feel about Felicity compromising her identity with her clothes, since you know as well as I that most people only see what they expect to see, and no one will think to stare at a figure dressed in male clothes riding at top speed out of Mayfair. You’re also feeling more than the jealousy you displayed when Mr Allen presented Felicity with the sheep bladder and she exclaimed ‘I’m not touching it - such things should be kept to yourself!’ in full hearing of everyone present.”

“I wasn’t jealous,” Oliver denied immediately.

“You never showed irritation at any of her exclamations before,” Diggle said, and as if to prove his point, Felicity and Roy entered the room by the secret passage behind one of the three paintings then.

“This place reminds me of a cavern,” said Felicity as she laid her eyes on the observation room for the first time. “Or a grotto. A cave, much like the catacombs under Canary Court. Except above ground.”

“This is part of the owners’ suite,” Oliver explained. “The rooms you saw the last time you were here are just behind that door over there.”

“So this is where the Arrow officially lives?” asked Roy, whom he had yet to see since he gave him instructions after breakfast.

Oliver’s nod became a shake of the head as Felicity added, “Does this mean you call this place the Arrow Cave?”

“No,” he said flatly. “Never. And we should begin this meeting.”

There were only two armchairs in the observation room, but he had pulled the wooden stool out of the closet behind his _Rembrandt_ and the table as well to act as additional seating until he could arrange for Felicity and Roy to have chairs of their own.

Oliver watched from where he was seated on the table as Felicity sank into his chair and Roy took his place on the stool. Diggle gave him an expectant glance as he too sat down, his hands clasped before him.

“When I started this, I never thought I’d have so many partners. But watching Felicity’s friends today has helped me realise that we need to be working in tandem, and that we all need to know what the other is up to in respect of this mission.

“My father was murdered five years ago, and today I saw one of the men who contributed to that on Miss Snow’s operating table, as one of the Hyde Park murder victims.”

Felicity gave a start at that, exclaiming, “You never said – even when I mentioned that I’ve seen one of them at Slade Wilson’s house in Cambridge! Was it the same victim?”

Perhaps it was a timely interruption, because he felt the urge to let out a small sigh of frustration at the possibility that his old friend had lied to him back in that same house then. “Yes, the one identified as Anthony Ivo, I believe you said. The point is, the Hyde Park murders themselves are hitting close to home in my mission, as well as in their threat to me personally. The culprit knows who I am. And the murders were a message we cannot afford to ignore.”

“If that is the case, your grace,” put in Roy, “then it might be prudent to hear what I learnt about Stellmoor today first.”

He told him that the man known as Stellmoor was named Simon Lacroix, and more importantly, that he too was an archer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that we skipped the cutesy Flarrow scenes - I didn't think they added much by way of plot or theme as opposed to a proper Team Arrow scene though if enough people want to read what the original plan was I am happy to write an additional scene showing it from the beginning to the end. A part of me really likes that Oliver is inspired by what Barry is doing in this particular world as opposed to how it was done on the shows, just like how Team Flash works in a basement in this story while Team Arrow works on the top floor. By the way I forgot to add in the previous chapter that surgeons were considered inferior to physicians because their training was not as intensive; they were more like our GPs today.
> 
> I began with Roy being a badass because I felt so sad that each time he got a new lead to investigate the person appears in front of Oliver of her own accord. The reference to the disease known as the devil's nuts is also a shoutout to fans of Eloisa James's work - I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. I don't actually know what disease it is, only that it can spread through blankets. Janina Gavankar has Indian heritage, and that's why I picked the Siroi lily as a hark to that. I'm not sure if the gift Oliver gave was possible given the difficulty of cultivating Siroi lilies, but McKenna Hall appreciates the gesture! Roy walks into the alleyway that a carriage would have entered to reach the stables and parking area behind a townhouse, an area called the mews. I struggled long and hard about how much Thea and Roy to give (the subplots are getting a bit out of hand from my perspective) but I figured that Thea and Roy fans have been waiting with very little to go on. I made an allusion to how he's trying to beat Dick Grayson at the number of exes he has had in the comic books, as well as his complete devotion to Thea in the show. I also made an allusion to the pencil scene because I thought introducing the red flechette that Oliver gave him was a little too abrupt. Again shout-out to Belle fans in the 'I am not unaccompanied line'. John 'Gentleman' Jackson was a real person who revolutionised boxing into what we know it as today, whether it be the rules or the styles. Shout-out to fans of Lisa Kleypas's The Hathaways, when Roy calls Thea a gadji woman - remember how Sin mocked him for having recourse to being part gypsy in Chapter Nine? Gadji is a term used to denote a non-Rom woman. Thea is not being rude when she refuses to talk to the one-eyed man, because a woman was not supposed to speak to someone to whom she was not introduced. Finally I know the "Don't abandon me" "Never" exchange comes from Oliver and Roy, but I thought it fit better here between Roy and Thea. I'll write something else for them when it comes down to it.
> 
> I've been ignoring all your questions about Tommy's intentions because I was writing this chapter and yes, I will now be hiding in my hole from the Merlance fans who are not happy about what has happened. Spitalfields is where the weaving industry was located until the industrial revolution and cost of production in London itself relocated to industrial towns like Manchester. The notion of a quota was somewhat inspired by Smite's sentimentality quota in Courtney Milan's Unraveled. For clarification, abigail was a term for maid, not Joanna's other name. Captain Thomas Coram was the founder of the real Foundling Hospital in London, which played an important role in attempting to help the street children problem in the 19th century. I am aware that Laurel seems to be really moodswingy in this chapter, especially considering that she just argued with Quentin in the last chapter, but I think I always understood her outbursts as her losing control rather than a genuine fight she wants.
> 
> Yes, the quotation marks are meant to be there when Barry is mentioned in Oliver's mind. He'll get there to liking him someday, just not yet. Trivia: the past two chapters were actually inspired by the "It feels good having you inside me" line but that scene never made it into the writing stages even as I wrote all the scenes that were to follow. It'll likely find its way into this story sometime, eventually.


	26. Favour

“This is a very odd time to be calling, Malcolm,” said Moira, as she entered her drawing room, whereto she had instructed her footman to direct the earl upon the announcement of his arrival to Starling House. She felt slight annoyance by his sudden appearance in her home, and was glad that Thea had retired early that evening so she would not know of the visit.

The earl stood, at the sound of her voice, as did his companion.

“I’m afraid that this is no social call,” Malcolm said, almost apologetically. “I have taken the liberty of asking all your footmen to leave the room for this conversation.”

“I can certainly see that,” she said slowly, her eyes running over the appearance of the man that the earl had brought with him. Though dressed neatly, in the same sumptuous fabrics that adorned the earl’s form, the first thing she had noticed about the man was the controlled way he moved, the lethal grace by which he had risen to his feet. The black patch that covered his right eye did not detract from the power that he was exuding, only enhanced it in respect of the intensity of his gaze.

“Duchess, may I present Mr Joseph ‘Slade’ Wilson, of Cambridgeshire? He is an expert in the acquisition of antiquities and rare artifacts, and an acquaintance of the current duke. Slade, Her Grace the Duchess of Starling.”

“Enchanted, your grace,” rasped Mr Wilson, his dark head bending over her outstretched hand.

“Likewise, Mr Wilson,” Moira replied, watching both men carefully. “Won’t you gentlemen take a seat and inform me what urgency brings you to Starling House at this time?”

They all sat, and Mr Wilson waved a hand as if to concede the right of reply to the earl. Malcolm ran his hand over the polished head of his cane, his brow raising as he appeared to be forming his words in his mind before he spoke. “…I sensed that you didn’t quite believe me the last time we spoke of the current duke’s involvement in Robert’s work. When I spoke of information from a most reliable source, I meant Mr Wilson here, and I thought you might wish to hear straight it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Do tell the duchess what happened, Mr Wilson.”

“Of course.” The man shifted his seat and looked intently into Moira’s eyes, before he began. “Your grace, what I’m about to tell you may be shocking, for you see, it came as one to me too. I met the current duke in the first year of his absence from England, when he was still Marquess Queene. While still mourning the tragic loss of his father, he had been thrown most unjustly in a Crimean prison following his attempt to alert a family of _dachnik_ s – I beg your pardon, a holidaying family of Russian nobles – to his identity as English aristocracy. The language barrier was obviously an impediment to his attempts, of course, and I arranged for the duke to be released as soon as I realised what had happened, a fortuitous coincidence of fate on my personal travels.

“When the current duke was released, he chose not to return to London, but instead asked to accompany me on my travels. I took him on gladly, and we became fast friends, despite the inferiority of my birth, which was not a barrier in the duke’s generous mind. During the course of the time he spent with me, he confided in me that his father had been murdered by fiends, who too desired to kill him, and that he needed time to gain the skills necessary to flush them out and resurrect his father’s legacy.

“I must confess now I only half-believed his grace’s tale. It was…too fantastic, perhaps – a kidnapping following the carriage accident, then incarceration aboard a prison hulk that shipwrecked and brought him to Crimea… The current duke would recount this while clutching his late and esteemed father’s signet ring, as well as a locket featuring a woman’s portrait, while passionately declaring his vengeance. While my heart was greatly moved at his dedication, as well as the tragic fate that had befallen him in the first throes of his youth, I privately worried for the health of my dear friend, and indeed, if I were to be perfectly honest, his sanity.

“We parted on abrupt terms a year later; torn asunder during a journey by ship that nature sought to direct its ire toward. When I heard of his return to London, I sought to reestablish the connection and invited his grace to my house party.

“His grace came bearing smiles, and appearing as though he had recovered from the fits of passions that used to strike him in his youth. I gave thanks then for the recovery my friend had made, until I discovered that his sole objective in coming was to spy on me by rifling through my private files.

“I was shocked and dismayed, your grace. I thought his suspicious nature, his paranoid belief that someone was after him, was a thing of the past – a mere reaction to the grief of losing his father, if you will. Nevertheless, I inquired about his purposes, in the hopes of guiding him towards a more rational, more phlegmatic path.

“It was as if no friendship stood between us in the way he reacted. He accused me, your grace, of murdering the late duke, and in his failure to exact an admission of guilt then, he seized and wielded a longbow and a quiver of arrows in the aim of compelling a false confession by force.

“I do not know how he came to that conclusion, your grace. I only feared for my life and my friend that very evening, and it is this fear that causes me to speak to you frankly now.”

Slade Wilson stopped, and Moira realised that she was meant to respond, beyond the whitening of her knuckles over the arm of her chair with every word he uttered. “…I see,” she said, unable to fully find her voice.

Malcolm intervened. “It is natural to take time to react, duchess. Perhaps Mr Wilson could step out for a moment whilst you compose yourself?”

She must have assented, or Mr Wilson agreed, for the next thing she knew, the door had closed behind him and Malcolm had a heavy hand placed on her shoulder as he urged her in a firm voice to breathe.

“You’ve got to be strong, Moira,” he was saying. “For Thea, if not for Oliver…”

“It cannot be true…” She sounded strangled. “I need to speak to my son…”

“Moira, you’re being irrational. Based on our own observations, and the account supplied by Slade, there can only be two possibilities. Either Oliver has gone mad with his grief and is only beginning to show it, or he is feigning madness to further Robert’s goals. Both outcomes require committal to Bedlam, if necessary.”

She shook her head. “My son cannot be insane. He is headstrong and impulsive, but there is – he does not sound mad when he speaks.”

“His behaviour oscillates between charm and choler. You said yourself that he has been given to erratic displays of melancholy, and that he has become increasingly secretive ever since he returned. If it is not lunacy, if there is indeed some method to his inconsistency, then the danger is greater. The duchy is at stake, Moira.”

“No, no, no…” Moira said, holding up both hands to her face. “Not Thea as well…What is going to become of my daughter…”

“Utter disgrace,” Malcolm answered, patting her shoulder absently.

She made an incoherent sound of frustration, pressing the heel of her hand into her brow. “…I should have let you raise her…I should have admitted to the _ton_ that she’s your daughter when you kept asking…”

Having reached the end of his patience, the earl drove his thumb into her shoulder, a touch that was not comforting in the slightest. “Moira, stop this sniveling at once. I appreciate your sudden inclination for honesty after seventeen years of insinuating that I don’t know how to count, but do you not realise that having helped you cover up the evidence five years ago, my earldom too is forfeit if the news gets out?”

The pain cleansed her mind, helped her fall silent and think. She raised her head to look Malcolm in the eye. “We’ll need to stop Mr Wilson from talking. And Thea needs to be married out quickly to shield her from the scandal.”

He released her shoulder, approval in his pale eyes. “Now you’re making sense – that’s what I’ve been saying all along. We’ll have to defer our plans for Thea tonight, but I brought Slade Wilson here because he has a favour to ask of you. He’s a businessman, Moira, having built his reputation on keeping promises. He wants to propose an exchange of favours for your consideration.”

She straightened her posture, touching a hand to the hair at her temples to right her appearance. “I will hear him.”

Malcolm opened the door and in came Slade, his hands held behind his back, a lazy smile on his face, as he said, “I was just admiring the exquisite landscape you have in the hallway, your grace. It’s a Constable, isn't it?”

“I believe so – my late husband’s acquisition. Do please take a seat again, for the earl tells me that there is something you wish for me to help with…”

“Yes, your grace, I have indeed brought a petition today. You see, the Duke of Starling borrowed something of mine when he left my house – something that I’m quite desperate to have back in my possession.”

“Something?” Moira repeated, raising a brow.

“Perhaps ‘someone’ would be more appropriate. A Miss Felicity Smoak, to be precise. I would be indebted to the entire Queene family, if your grace could assist me with my retrieval of her and her services.”

“Slade, it occurs to me that you’ve never told me what you want a mere secretary so badly for,” observed Malcolm, turning to him.

“What mere secretary is fluent in twelve languages, my lord? Felicity Smoak used to tutor Cantabridgians in Latin and mathematics when she was residing in Ely, and she was working on a very tricky translation for me when she broke her promise and left,” he replied smoothly, a polite smile on his face.

Moira’s mind was racing as she considered the offer. There was no question of whether she would prefer the safety of her children to that of Miss Smoak, but any course of action had to be proceeded upon with care, given her son’s irritating inability to discern where his true loyalties had to lie.

She made her decision, just as Malcolm sought to inquire as to the nature of the work Miss Smoak was engaged to complete.

“I do not see a problem with helping a friend of the duke’s, particularly when said friend is so understanding about my intense dislike for idle talk and groundless gossip,” declared Moira. “I’m afraid Miss Smoak is not in at present, but I can call my housekeeper and give her instructions to pack up Miss Smoak’s things to expedite her return to Cambridge, if that is to your convenience.”

Joseph ‘Slade’ Wilson inclined his head in gratitude. “I’m much obliged, your grace.”

Moira rang for Mrs Raisa.

* * *

He sat in his armchair before the glass façade, his letters piled to his side and his mind on the events of the afternoon.

It was a fruitful call paid to Felicity’s friends that afternoon, given the amount of information that he had gained. Each of the Hyde Park murder corpses had been marked in the exact same way, which indicated that the archer with whom he was dealing was highly skilled. Miss Snow had divined the cause of death to be a single arrow to the heart, and that it was possible that the other wounds were inflicted after the time of death itself, though that would have required immense speed and precision.

Oliver recalled the methodical way she demonstrated that the depth of each wound matched its counterpart on another of the corpses, and how Mr Ramon had confirmed that finding, through his experiments with a hunk of meat into which Oliver had been invited to fire arrows at.

Felicity’s friend Barry further volunteered the information that the bodies were likely left in Hyde Park after the time of death, given the lack of evidence pertaining to a struggle in the location, and the names of the victims, all of whom had been mercenaries at some point in their lives.

Most critical was the inclusion of Anthony Ivo among the nine victims. Oliver had never known his name before this, only his face, but he remembered how instrumental the man had been in his torture aboard the Amazo.

He took a deep breath as fragments of those memories pierced his consciousness: the blood, the sound of his father begging for mercy on his behalf, the helplessness he had felt as his father’s life slipped away before his eyes.

A movement to his right caught his eye, and he saw not Diggle, who usually helped him ready Verdant for observations, but Felicity.

She was dressed in skirts, having changed out of her breeches after they returned to Starling House in time for dinner, and had been wearing those same skirts during their meeting earlier.

He rose as she drew nearer, raising a brow to question why she had returned after the conclusion of their meeting, whereupon it was agreed that they would wait for Diggle to access the War Office files before they acted on Roy’s information about Simon Lacroix. Roy and Felicity had returned to Starling House while Oliver and Diggle stayed on in Verdant, with the caveat that Roy was to return tomorrow morning to clean up the secret passages – Oliver’s designated punishment for his complicity in the matter of Felicity’s donning breeches, although he had not phrased it as such when he gave that particular instruction.

She halted her approach just as she reached the arm of his chair, the tips of her fingers resting on its smooth surface. He watched her tilt her head up to meet his eyes fully.

“Roy missed servants’ supper in Starling House and wanted to get something from the kitchen downstairs and so I…thought I’d ask you how you were. You seemed upset in Caitlin’s house this afternoon.”

He needed to work on obscuring his emotions, if both Diggle and Felicity could read him that well. Out of habit, Oliver began to shake his head and hide behind his most charming smile, but his attempt to deny the veracity of her observation fell away as he looked at her.

Her fingers were tapping nervously on his chair’s arm, and though she appeared patient, he could sense apprehension from the way her jaw was set as though her teeth were clenched tightly behind the slight smile she was showing him.

She was inviting him to be open with her, though she believed that he would reject that invitation outright.

“It’s Slade,” Oliver said. The first letter in the correspondence he had brought back from Starling House to go through was from Slade, a tersely worded note that read ‘ _Kid: You owe me a favour, and I am coming to collect it. –S_ ’. “Slade Wilson was a friend to me before our fight in Whaddon – almost like a brother.”

“A little more than kin, and less than kind,” muttered Felicity. “I’m sorry, do please continue.”

He felt the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, despite the dark direction of his earlier thoughts. “I’ve always known that Slade is morally ambiguous, at best, but I did believe that he would not betray a friend – or a brother. He told me that he was not involved in my father’s murder. But what you shared today about Anthony Ivo indicates otherwise, and I’m not sure I want to immediately attempt beating the truth out of him again…”

He did not know if he could avenge his father by killing a friend, or if he could still summon up his feelings of friendship if he found out that Slade was his father’s murderer.

“Well, the last time you tried that, we had to undress you and threaten to tie you to the bed to see to your wounds – please forget the exact phrasing of that sentiment. What I meant to say was, my personal feelings about Deathstroke and his methods aside, that if he promises to be an unreliable and uncooperative source, then perhaps keeping him at arms’ length for the time being would be best. Anthony Ivo would have had ties to other persons, wouldn’t he?” Felicity pressed her lips together into a wistful smile. “We don’t control what another person does once the decision to trust that person has been made, Oliver. We only hope to choose well from the outset, and choosing wrong isn’t necessary a sign of our incompetence.”

She was right; his worries could be deferred for a while in their investigations. Oliver looked at her with gratitude. “Thank you.”

At his words, her smile became one of quiet pleasure. “I’ll bid you good night then.” She began to leave, but he called her name. The light streaming in from the glass façade traced her profile as she turned back towards him.

“You were…not fine today. Something seemed to be vexing you before we paid a call on Miss Snow.”

Recognition flickered in her blue eyes. “That’s nothing. I’ve sorted it out.”

He quirked a brow up, as if to remind her that he had just shared his troubles with her.

“I had a crisis of strategy,” she conceded. “Much like playing cards.”

“Cards?” Of all the things he had expected her to divulge, this was not it.

“Yes. I’ve always found that one’s play is very revealing about one’s priorities and personality. Some people play with wild abandon, for instance – that tells me they are reckless. Other verge on absurdity in how conservative they are in missing every chance to make a gain for fear of the risk. And some cheat.”

“Does that mean they have a lack of morals?”

She chuckled. “Possibly. More likely than not it’s because cheating is the only way they know how to live. My play is typically very deliberate – I count. I see possibilities, and I calculate probabilities as the game progresses. The trick is not to become too attached to a possibility such that you eschew the probable, and that’s what I did, to the extent of missing out on an outcome that was just as good, and far more probable. I’ve sorted myself out; it won’t happen again.”

He took a while to wrap his mind around her words, but he could feel relief for her sake. It was most curious; he had always thought that the highest degree of friendship was that akin to the bonds shared by siblings – that was why he always ended love affairs after a spell. Given his visceral reaction to the sight of her in breeches that afternoon, it was safe to conclude that his regard for her was anything but that confined to the devotion between siblings, and yet he felt that their connection was no less than what he shared with his closest friends. He felt comfortable exposing his emotions to her, ugly as the beast underneath the layers of charm and clothes he wore was.

“I’m happy for you,” he said, meaning it despite his inability to fully comprehend what she referred to, and wondering if it would be appropriate to follow that with a question about her reaction to his Cinderella reference that morning, when a knock came on the door behind them.

It was a member of the staff he had employed at Verdant, there to relay a message to the Duke of Starling that a Lord Thomas Merlyn sought an audience with him. Having opened the door by a mere crack so that the man could not look into the room, Oliver closed the door and turned back to Felicity, who had picked up all of his mail to her person.

“I believe Roy has lost himself in the desserts served here,” she said. “I’ll take these back to Starling House via a hack first.”

“Are you sure?” Oliver asked. Diggle was busy downstairs but the man could easily be redeployed to escort her home.

Felicity crossed the room to his Caravaggio, the oil painting that obscured the tunnel by which she and Roy had entered the room. “Oliver, I’m just going from St James’s Street to Grosvenor Square. I’ll sort this mail for you by tomorrow.” He watched her reach for the lever in the frame and pull open the painting door, before passing through it.

He waited for the door to swing shut behind her before he opened the official passage to let Tommy into the observation room. Contrary to his usual appearance of a dandy, Tommy smelt of brandy, his dark hair tousled far beyond the artful disarray a Titus style was supposed to resemble, and the collar of his grey coat was turned up in a way that any self-respecting valet would balk at.

“‘ _The Sacrifice of Isaac_ ’ and ‘ _The Taking of Christ_ ’,” blurted Tommy, his eyes falling upon the Rembrandt and the Caravaggio hanging on the walls. “This really is a church, pretty glass and all.”

Oliver strode over to the chairs, waiting for his friend to explain his sudden desire to meet, particularly given that they had last parted badly in Bristol. Tommy sank into the one opposite him, his face becoming crestfallen as he opened his mouth to speak.

“I told Laurel today. That I loved her, and that I have loved her all along. She didn’t exactly take it well, and while I know we haven’t been on the best of terms for a while – not even counting Bristol – a part of me is hoping really hard that I haven’t managed to chase away all of my childhood friends this week.

“You don’t even have to talk about what has been going on with you, or tell the whole story about Sara and Bristol. Just…sit and drink brandy with me. Like old times, as friends.”

Oliver stared back at him, trying to frown instead of letting the corner of his mouth quirk upward, for while he felt worry for Laurel given her distress about her family yesterday, that worry was eclipsed by the joy of having his best friend back. “I don’t know, Tommy. Five years is a long time for two friends not to see each other. Moreover, it’s my brandy you’re proposing we imbibe.”

Tommy broke into a wide grin, before he pooh-poohed. “I’ll bet you for it then. In _vingt-et-un_.”

“Your play is terrible,” said Oliver, though he stood up to retrieved his brandy and a pack of cards. “Someone told me today that one’s play is very revealing about one’s priorities and personality, and that means that you are impetuous. And a bad loser.”

“That same someone must consider you the greatest idiot to ever walk this earth,” returned Tommy, shuffling the deck as Oliver pulled a side table over for their game. “Please tell me it’s a woman of immeasurable sense we are speaking of.”

Oliver felt a flush of amusement touch his lips, at the conversation that had just passed between Felicity and him, the sense she had spoken and the double entendre she managed to make about the time he lay injured in bed despite the gravity of their subject-matter.

“The most brilliant woman I’ve ever met.”

* * *

 

It took a while for her hack to reach Grosvenor Square, given the congested traffic tonight, which gave Felicity plenty of time to open and sort Oliver’s mail as she had offered. There was not enough light in the vehicle to read long letters, most of which were scented _billet-doux_ from women, but she had read the most important one of them all, as she waited in the candle-lit secret tunnel in Verdant.

She ran over its words. _Kid: You owe me a favour and I’m here to collect it. –S_

The frank on the envelope told her that it came from Whaddon, South Cambridgeshire, and while it was not written in Slade’s secretary’s hand, she could hear his voice in the cadence of that sort message.

“There’s no need to be afraid,” she said out loud, stacking all the envelopes neatly so she could tuck them under her arm. She was safe, she reminded herself, and even Donna was safe, especially if this was indeed Slade’s handwriting, because then Felicity could forge her legal release from the IOU slips held by Slade Wilson.

Starling House was quiet, and her every step was a loud thud on the polished floor as she progressed towards the library with a candle borrowed from the footman in the entrance hall, to leave the letters at her desk before she retired for the night.

Some strange urge tempted her to unlock the drawer where she kept the previous duke’s messages, and pick up the sheet she had arranged at the top, the sole piece of paper without a corresponding title. She held it closer to her face, and then a voice was heard from behind her.

“I’ve been waiting all night for you to return, Felicity.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two announcements: (1) the missing Flarrow scene that's Chapter 24.5 is up as a side story titled The Orion Inquest; (2) I'm flying back to England to start term which means I may have to take a break from the writing. I'll try my best but it's a really important academic year and I have a paper to write, which means less research about Regency England and more about the 1870s (out of interest has anyone figured out what I study?). In case I take a long break I want to thank all of you so much for reading my story and for all the lovely comments and reviews left - they are what keeps me going whenever I wonder why I bother so much about this and/or am suffering writer's block. This particular chapter was very difficult on me emotionally because I had writers' block and just couldn't see the point of whatever I was writing even though there are at least 1000 words of Olicity and more Slade being evil that I couldn't eventually add to this. But what is writing without drafts being discarded and high and low points? I reread all the comments then, and I felt so much better before I had the inspiration for this chapter.
> 
> There's something about how I see Slade that inspires the Romantic in me (big R, of course), and I had a lot of fun writing his speech, though I suspect the longwinded-ness of it all was brought on by my picking up Atlas Shrugged during my writer's block for inspiration, though I swear Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was in my mind when he starts his tale of Oliver's purported madness, and Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo and Hamlet (of course) were also influences when I wrote that part. I didn't pick which John Constable painting is in the hallway; feel free to suggest whatever you think should be there.
> 
> Felicity quotes Hamlet Act 1 Scene 2 to Oliver. She's also referring to friendship as opposed to love in the outcomes she speaks of, which incidentally was unconsciously written into her interior monologue when she spoke to Thea in a very Austenite way. A lot of readers have asked me for Tommy and Oliver to be friends again, and for Olicity's friends to lovers trope to be played up more than the physical aspect of their attraction, and I hope this addresses your concerns. Also the playful exchange of insults between Oliver and Tommy was likely inspired by the fact that I watched The Man from U.N.C.L.E. twice this week.
> 
> I had the idea for a short Olicity scene regarding Felicity's employment and the fact that women are not supposed to receive articles of clothing from men. That will likely be up soon if I spend my long haul flight scrawling in my notebook xxx


	27. Gone

Far too many hours had passed by the time he learnt of her disappearance.

Tommy and he had wandered out of Verdant in search of sport at about four in the morning, when they could no longer keep track of who was winning at cards in the observation room. Both men said nothing of their joint decision not to head to the Fields of Fancy or any like establishment, which they would have done had this night taken place five years ago. It was understood that Oliver and Tommy would make no mention of Laurel; it was not a night for recounting or accounting for past and present, save for the bond of friendship that connected the two men.

By chance they ran into an old school friend too about to leave the club, a Captain Harold Jordan of the Royal Navy who had shared their house in Eton, when he had been known as Hal. Captain Jordan spoke of a boxing event to take place at dawn in the basement of a public house near the Isle of Dogs, to which Tommy expressed such enthusiasm that they rode henceforth without even allowing Oliver the time to inform Diggle of his leaving St James’s Street.

Tankards of ale were consumed amongst the men as the captain and the Merry Merlyn enchanted the company with their conversation, all the while Oliver sipped at his drink in silence by the curling flames of the fireplace. He had to be careful about the amount he consumed, for the loss of control, whether it was triggered by an event that reminded him of his five years away, or even just the general effect of total inebriation, meant danger for anyone unfortunate enough to be by his side were a fit of rage or fear to come over him.

“I’ve done it now!” crowed Tommy, after his third tankard, not counting the bottle of brandy Oliver and him had imbibed at Verdant. He clambered onto the table and tugged insistently at Oliver’s arm, an encouragement to stand with him above the crowd.

“What is it you have done?” Oliver asked warily, eyeing his friend and trying to estimate how soused he was. Tommy’s reply was not about his confession to Laurel but the announcement that he had bet on Oliver’s beating the best boxer in the Royal Navy in the match to take place in a couple of minutes.

“Tommy, take it back,” Oliver repeated several times over the din as Captain Jordan proceeded to took more bets from the men about who would win.

“Nonsense!” cried Tommy, patting Oliver’s shoulder enthusiastically. “You’ll be fine – it’s just a friendly match with a captain and no one here but Hal knows about your real rank.”

They were swept by the coursing of the crowd towards the basement, Oliver remarking, “If it’s such a great idea of yours, why is it that I’m the one who has to fight?”

Ever helpful, Tommy was busy rounding up the knee man and bottle man to serve Oliver during the thirty-second rest periods between each round. “Because you’re the one that’s built like a plough-horse. And you don’t need your pretty face to charm your intended bride. Stop fussing and hop into the ring.”

Oliver recalled dimly that Tommy had said something similar the night he committed the prank that led to his being sent down from Oxford, but he began stripping off his coat and cravat all the same.

It took some time for Oliver to be deemed ready, given that he refused to remove his signet ring and that meant that the white cloth typically wound around a boxer’s hands had to account for that preference. He had also insisted on wearing his shirt into the eight-foot square roped off from the rest of the crowd for the match, despite the typical practice of fighting with bare chests.

He did not want questions to be asked about the marks on his body.

This wish of his was put paid to when a heavy-set man with a pronounced nose and chin, who was to serve as one of the umpires for the match, came up to him from amidst the crowd of navy men on their leave and normal patrons of the pub that had formed to watch the popular sport.

“Sir, kindly remove your shirt,” said the umpire.

Oliver hesitated for a moment before doing as told. The navy was no doubt accustomed to the sight of scars and even the occasional tattoo, but Oliver could sense a stilling of the crowd’s commotion as they saw what lay beneath this aristocrat’s fine clothes.

There were whispers being exchanged and widened eyes at the sight of his chest and his abdomen, which was ridged with more muscle than even the average Corinthian would have, not to mention the scar tissue that lined his torso, and the inking that no pampered gentleman would have heard of, let alone allow to mark his body.

A slack jaw and widened eyes were Tommy’s reaction to the sight. His eyes flitted from scar to scar as he began to have an idea of all of the injuries Oliver would have had to suffer in the five years away to garner such vestiges. Oliver looked away from his best friend’s reaction and face the rest of the crowd, waiting for his opponent to show himself.

An appreciative whistle broke the tenseness of the moment, coming from a wench perched upon the knee of one of the spectators, followed by the cheeky remark that Oliver looked like he could give even Gentleman Jackson competition, at least in being the artists’ new ideal male form. Her words brought on a series of raucous laughter and the cramped space of the basement was once again filled with cheer and excitement.

Another shirtless man entered the square, his wiry frame too covered with ink and a black patch over his right eye. “You don’t seem like the foppish aristocrat they told me I was to fight,” he said, making the final adjustments on the wrappings that protected his hands. “That friend of yours that set this up a Merlyn?”

Oliver tilted his head to narrowly avoid the fast jab that had been aimed for his jaw. “What’s it to you, Captain?”

The man dodged Oliver’s uppercut by taking a few steps backward, followed by skirting round him in an attempt to strike him from the back, which Oliver countered only by twisting his body to block the blow in the nick of time.

“I’ve met the earl and he doesn’t seem like much of a family man, but I swear I’ve been seeing his progeny everywhere this week, be it a girl at Jackson’s Saloon or the Merry Merlyn himself at this match.”

“Earl Merlyn doesn’t have a daughter,” said Oliver distractedly, feigning a strike to the man’s neck before bringing his other fist towards his liver. “How do you know the earl?”

“He’s a great friend of the previous Admiral of the Fleet – the late Sir Peter Parker. Had the pleasure of being introduced to him at an assembly.”

They circled each other for a spell, trading bits of convesation, before Oliver grunted as the man’s fist came into contact with his ribs, his hand coming up belatedly to shield the injured part.

His opponent let out a puff of air, shaking the hand that he had just struck Oliver with. “Hitting you is like trying to smash concrete – can’t say I’ll enjoy the obvious stratagem of wearing out your stamina if it means I have to do this a few times each round.”

Oliver took the opportunity to run his shoulder into the man’s chest, and he felt satisfaction as his opponent staggered backwards into the ropes that cordoned off their fighting space from the impact.

“I’m afraid the converse is not true, Captain.”

The man wiped his mouth with a hand and laughed good-naturedly. “Right, fast and brutal it has to be then.” He charged towards Oliver to the roar of the crowd, and the next hour or so passed in a flurry of quick blows enacted in succession. Despite the man’s smaller build he possessed an uncanny accuracy in every strike he made, such that Oliver’s speed and strength was matched by the potency of his opponent’s blows.

Two pairs of arms belonging to the umpires came to separate them mid-tussle in their tenth round, and Oliver noted that their spectators were no longer shouting in enthusiasm but disgruntlement. He saw Diggle enter the playing field, much to the dismay of the crowd, his eyes wild with worry.

“Felicity’s gone missing.”

With those three words, Oliver felt the adrenalin of the fight leave his body, replaced by an urgent flash of emotion that threatened his control. He had been light on his feet when he boxed, displaying the skill that an ordinary Corinthian like the Duke of Starling would have had, but he felt the Arrow’s instinct rising to the fore now.

“Where was she last seen?” he growled, his face contorting into the forbidding expression that accompanied his rage.

He felt the presence of another person approaching them, and Diggle’s concern gave way to hostility as he laid eyes on the man that Oliver had been fighting.

“Lawton,” said Diggle, as if the man’s name was a curse word.

It was then that Oliver took a good look at the tattoos marking the man’s body and noticed that the inky patterns were in fact names, one of which read ‘ _A. Diggle_ ’. There was a story here that he was not acquainted with between his valet and this man.

“How have you been, John?” asked the man called Lawton pleasantly.

“Captain, I will appreciate if you could give us some privacy. Digg, did she reach home after leaving the club?”

Diggle’s eyes did not leave the other man, who edged away politely, but he responded to Oliver’s question. “I only learnt of her disappearance because the housemaids were talking about lighting the fireplace in her room last night in vain when I returned to Starling House at dawn. I’ve checked her room – all her belongings are gone and I left to find you immediately. Roy’s already been sent out to look for her.”

Oliver turned to where Tommy was watching from the sides. “I have to go. I’ll pay you back for your loss.” To the crowd he declared, “You may consider it the captain’s win.”

“Someone in trouble?” asked Tommy over the resounding boos that had followed Oliver’s announcement, gathering up Oliver’s things and handing them to him over the ropes.

“I hope to God she isn’t.”

They rushed back towards Grosvenor Square.

 

Oliver and Diggle arrived at Starling House at nine, the time when his family was accustomed to rise to ready themselves for breakfast at ten-thirty. He went to the library first, where Felicity’s desk stood erect in its corner. There were a few books and writing paper sitting on its surface, as well as the mail that he had passed to her, sorted neatly as she had promised, but the detail that caught his attention was how the drawer in the desk was left half-closed.

He pulled the drawer open. It was empty, even though he could have sworn she often locked his father’s papers in there.

Oliver ascended the stairs to the second floor where her room was next. A scullery maid was sweeping away the last ashes of yesterday’s fire, but otherwise there was no one in the small room Felicity had occupied. He flung open the wardrobe wherein he had instructed all the clothes he had ordered for her be placed.

It too, was empty.

“Did anyone come to Starling House last night?” he asked of Diggle, who was standing at the doorway, his face grave. “Anyone who matches Slade Wilson’s description?”

“I just asked the footmen downstairs. Only Earl Merlyn came to pay a call on her grace, and he left before the time you mentioned that Felicity would have reached Starling House. I’m told that she did return last night, but she left in a hack with a man almost immediately. There was no struggle, and no one saw the man’s appearance to merit any identifying traits.”

Had she left him? And taken his father’s papers with her? He had not even believed she could be gone when Diggle first informed him, inasmuch as he trusted his friend to tell him the truth. Seeing the evidence of her absence with his own eyes brought out the frustration that had been mounting him all through the ride from the Isle of Dogs to the house, to be expressed as anger in the slam he caused with the violence with which he closed the wardrobe.

“I offered to send you with her last night, and she said no, because it would be safe. I don’t think she truly left of her own free will – where can she be, John?”

Diggle looked like he was going to reply, but then he turned his body and cast his eyes downward to assume a more servile stance. “Good morning, your grace.”

Moira appeared at the doorway, wearing a morning gown of muslin. “Good heavens, Oliver, what in the world are you doing up here and making such a din at this time of the morning?”

“Miss Smoak has vanished,” said Oliver, waving a hand at the emptiness of the room. “You don’t happen to know why, do you, mother?”

Her eyes followed the movement of his hand, her expression and voice even as she replied, “No, of course not. How abrupt this is – did she give you no notice at all of where she would be going?”

Oliver ran a hand through his hair. His mind was racing as he thought of her conduct yesterday. He searched for a sign of uneasiness that would have clued him in on her impending flight from his house. “No,” he said. “This is the first I’m learning of it.”

“Well, I’m sure a letter will be found very soon,” said Moira. “Miss Smoak probably had urgent business to see to – in fact, my maid once left in similarly peculiar circumstances and it turned out that she just needed to nurse her mother and the accompanying letter was lost amongst the mail I had. I’ll have the staff look out for it. Meanwhile, I need to speak to you in private before breakfast begins.”

Oliver exchanged a glance with Diggle. “I’ll come to the breakfast room at quarter past ten, mother. Let me speak with Diggle about the day’s schedule first.”

“I need more time, Oliver. It is a matter of upmost importance.”

“This is urgent, duchess. Pray wait for me downstairs.”

She appeared irritated at his tone, but she turned and left for the stairs. Oliver waited for the sound of her footsteps to fully fade away before he beckoned Diggle into the room. The door was closed for privacy.

“Anatoli said that she was working on something called the Kingmaker. Ask your contacts if there’s any mention of such; Slade will no doubt advertise if he has her in his custody. I’ll go find Mr Allen this afternoon and then I’ll check with Anatoli myself in the evening.”

“You have a dinner at the Spencers’ you agreed to attend,” replied Diggle. “And it does seem as though Felicity has left us intentionally, much as I don’t want to say it.”

“Then don’t say it. A flight like this takes planning and preparation. When would she have the time to pack yesterday, when we went to call upon Miss Snow?”

“She chose to wear breeches instead of a riding habit, which could have been packed away by then.”

“No,” Oliver denied flatly. “It’s Felicity. If she really wanted to leave, even without giving us notice, she wouldn’t have taken the clothes. Or my father’s papers. That’s just not the sort of person she is.”

Diggle nodded slowly, before saying, “I am inclined to agree, based on what we’ve seen of her character thus far. But we’ve only known her for a short while, Oliver, just slightly more than a week. I don’t think you should rule out the possibility immediately that she did intend to go. It may not be for a sinister purpose – maybe she has gone to find her mother. We should allow Roy to exhaust his leads before you tear up London to find her. The _ton_ must not know of your connections to Anatoli, or indeed why a mere secretary would merit so much effort from a duke. They must not know of the papers, and besides, Felicity’s only been gone for eleven hours.”

Eleven hours was a long time when the mail coaches had left first thing in the morning for all corners of Britain and the great host of black hacks traversing London’s streets meant that she could have gone anywhere without anyone’s notice.

“Give my apologies to my mother and question all of the staff on my behalf again,” said Oliver. “I’m going to Marylebone to see if I can find her house.”

 

It had taken prolonged banging on quite a few doors before he found the house the Smoaks had rented when they were in town, and the landlord was of little use despite Oliver’s waving his ducal authority about to cow Waymouth Street’s inhabitants into submission as he asked about any recent sighting of a woman matching her description.

He did not sense anybody watching the house in question, be the person an agent of Deathstroke or not, as he barged into the small terrace house where the Smoaks leased a set of rooms, and demanded to see the landlord. The man swore he had not seen either Donna nor Felicity since a month ago, and even added rather churlishly that the lease was coming to an end and he was going to throw their things out if they did not return and pay what was due to him as rent by the months’ end. Oliver gave him what would settle the rent for a couple months more, making a mental note to arrange for Felicity’s personal effects to be sent to Starling House once he located her, before leaving directly for Number 24 Bond Street.

Barry Allen was wearing a dressing gown and appeared entirely surprised to see him.

“Is there a problem, your grace?” asked the young man, setting the morning’s newspapers down from where they were tucked under his elbow.

“Have you heard from Felicity?” Oliver asked, even though he surmised from the confusion forming on Barry’s face that the young man had no idea of her absence. He waited for the words that would confirm his inference.

“Just yesterday,” replied Barry. “Your grace was present – is she not lodged at Starling House? Has something happened to her?”

“She’s vanished without a trace. Contact me immediately if you have word.” Oliver turned to leave, but he felt the other man grab at his arm to restrain him.

“You told me that you would protect her,” said Barry, accusation in his tone and eyes as he referred to the private conversation they had conducted in Miss Snow’s drawing room just the day before. Those were the exact words that Oliver had used when Barry confronted Oliver with the danger of his mission. “She said that she could trust you.”

“She can trust me,” affirmed Oliver.

He would not admit that he had already failed on that first assurance.

 

He returned to Starling House with Barry by his side about noon, having ridden to many of the possible locations where she could have gone. Barry had insisted on searching the city with him, providing information on the parts of town she had loved on the rare occasions she left her home in Ely for London. There was no trace of Felicity, not even when Barry had said to check Wells Street because she hated being in its vicinity, for reasons that she would never confide in him.

As he strode into the entrance hall, Oliver instructed the footman at the door to show Barry to the library, and then to Felicity’s room, so that Barry could confirm Diggle’s conclusions that there had indeed been no struggle. The young man had skill and experience at examining crime scenes, and Oliver wanted every single person he could deploy on the matter of her disappearance.

Diggle was found in the duke’s bedroom, systematically preparing a set of evening clothes on the settee in the corner. A nightshirt was laid out on Oliver’s bed, next to a tray bearing sandwiches and a lukewarm cup of tea.

“What are you doing? This is no time to be valeting.”

“These are the clothes that your grace will be wearing to dinner tonight. I cannot be here this evening because I have made plans to investigate the War Office’s leads on the previous duke’s service and Stellmoor, and the Duke of Starling must not appear out of sorts in public when his enemies are still watching him.

“On the matter of Felicity’s disappearance, I’ve checked with every member of the staff. There were only two footmen awake at that time, stationed in the entrance hall, and they were the ones I spoke to at nine this morning. I’ve asked as many other households in the neighbourhood as my status as a valet allows me to reach – no one can testify to any new information.”

The door opened and Roy entered, garbed in the Starling livery he was accustomed to wear on the rare occasions he had to relay urgent information to Oliver in the house itself, as opposed to just sending a note. He appeared worn out, almost haggard as he reported, Sin’s just been dispatched to Ely, your grace. No new information has come round, otherwise, but we will keep looking… Will your grace allow myself to personally resume the search at four?”

“And what are you proposing happen between now and four?” asked Oliver coldly. “Every hour that we while away is an hour that Felicity may be in danger.”

Diggle finally raised his eyes from the garments before him, and addressed Oliver with, “He needs to rest, Oliver. All of us do, especially you. We’ve not eaten or slept since we discovered Felicity’s disappearance at dawn this morning, and none of us are any good to her fatigued or weak from hunger. You need to recuperate, and follow through with what you originally planned for the day, in order not to alert your own enemies to her importance or the papers she has.”

Diggle’s words made absolute sense, but the combination of his failures and the uncertainty with which her fate hung sparked off his temper.

“I cannot be calm, Digg, if that is what you are bloody suggesting!” cried Oliver, his voice raised. The issue of his father’s papers was secondary, for he recalled the state she had been in when he had met her on Saturday night, and while he did not quite understand it, he knew that there was a visceral impulse in him that just needed to know that she was safe.

Taking a deep breath, he said, in quieter tones, “You weren’t at the chapel when I found her. She had willingly gone without food for days, for the fear that Slade would find her. If it’s Slade that has her, then I – ” His voice had faltered at the last of his words, and he broke off.

Sometime during his speech, his hand had begun his usual fidget, the rubbing of his fingers together whenever he felt guilty. And guilty he was, of not being able to protect her after he had declared confidently that he would do so to Barry Allen just yesterday.

“You’ll find her,” said Diggle. “You did so, when she was only ‘F. M. Smoak’ to us. You found her again, in Southwark, at her direction. Felicity is not lost permanently, and she’ll find a way to contact us if she’s being held against her will. But we all need rest and sustenance now, if we are going to be of any help to her.”

Diggle’s dark gaze was beseeching, and Oliver knew that his voice barely altered once that morning from the growl he used as the Arrow, the part of him that had emerged dominant during his five years away, where he fought only to survive. He closed his eyes and tried to halt the dark thoughts that had been plaguing him about her current fate ever since he had come home at nine that morning to find her missing.

A knock at his door interrupted the instructions that were coalescing in his mind; his butler bore a tray with a white calling card made from paper of the highest quality, complete with an engraved border which spoke of the wealth of the man to whom it belonged.

“A Mr Joseph Wilson to see your grace. Should I tell him that your grace is in?”

Oliver crushed the smooth grained paper on which Slade’s name had been neatly printed with a hand.

“Show him to my study.”

 

Oliver marshaled his thoughts as he waited within the confines of his study, standing by a window which overlooked the street below. He forced himself to shove aside the tumultuous emotion that had engulfed him in the exchange he just had with Diggle, and instead focused on the details before him: the clatter of carriage wheels turning over dirt roads, the faint hint of fading smoke from the last time he lit a cheroot in the room, the little indent into the wood of the window sill that had been made some twenty years ago when Tommy and he tried out the new bow that Robert had given Oliver for Christmas.

It was in the discrete aspects of his surroundings that he found sufficient grounding for his purpose, far away from the deleterious effects of his feelings. That was what he had learnt in his early days aboard the _Amazo_ , and he needed these instincts now to conduct the upcoming interview with Slade.

There was a click of the door, and Slade Wilson stood before him, wearing a double-breasted tailcoat in a pale grey. His eye-patch remained the black velvet he had favoured from the time he lost his eye in the Crimea, and he shot Oliver a smug smile as his greeting.

“How have you been, kid?” asked Slade in his distinctive rasp, the moment the door closed behind him such that they were alone. “Did you enjoy your birthday present?”

“Where is she?”

“I hope you are not speaking of Miss Felicity Smoak. You mean to say that she came to you on your birthday?”

He had indeed found her in Southwark on May the Sixteenth, but Oliver was in no mood to hear jokes about it.

“I asked you a question. Where is Felicity?”

Slade tut-tutted, whipping his hat off and tucking it under his arm as he did so. “It appears we are in a bind, kid. I came to London precisely because I wanted to ask you that question. Though perhaps I would have phrased it as, ‘Why did you steal her from my employ’, and followed with ‘I want her back as the favour you promised to me after destroying my dining room.’”

“No,” said Oliver. “Felicity Smoak is not an object to be bartered about. Do you not know where she is?”

Slade looked confidently back at him. “Would I have come to call at this early hour about the rumours that she is now working for you if I did?”

Oliver’s brow furrowed. He had been confident, as he strode down the corridor to his study, that Slade was responsible for this whole affair and had come to parley, or indulge in a lengthy fanfaronade detailing his successful recovery of Felicity. With Slade’s denial and admittedly logical retort, he was back to the state of panic that resulted when he had no inkling as to Felicity’s whereabouts.

“What time did you arrive in London?” he demanded.

Slade released an incredulous bark of laughter and studied Oliver’s appearance, which had been righted since the boxing match but remained evening dress, the relic of a previous night’s entertainment now anachronic for the time of the day.

“Eight in the evening last night. I had work to do – a new shipment of paintings arrived and the chap in usually charge of taking the stock has irritatingly sprained his wrist two days ago, which meant that I had to engage a useless buffoon to replace him temporarily, emphasis on useless. I was up to my neck in righting all the wrong classifications he made last night, which means that I would have had no time to abduct our dear Miss Smoak, even if I were minded to.”

When he finished his tale, Slade sat himself down in one of the armchairs in the room, an ankle resting on his knee as he perused Oliver’s appearance again, and tut-tutted.

“You’re in trouble, kid. I’ve never seen you in such a state before, and all because of one admittedly quite lovely woman – though I’ve always thought you preferred your women stronger. I suppose she’s never told you of her old sweetheart then.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A Mr Leander Seldon, known as Cooper to his intimates and son of a country squire from Kent. I had the chance to meet him in the course of my business at Christie’s, and he relayed the woeful tale to me when we were deep in our cups that day.

“He said he loved her from the start, but she used him most cruelly – the boy was entirely broken-hearted after she refused him, a regular _la belle dame sans merci_ or a faithless Hero to his namesake, if you will. Can’t say I’m surprised. After all, she is Donna’s daughter, and it appears she’s gotten to you as well. Who would have thought that the famed rake would fall so easily to a pair of deceptively innocent blue eyes?”

“What are you talking about?” began Oliver, shaking his head slightly at his consternation at the digression, as he sank into his own chair. “What does this have to do with her disappearance?”

“Look at you, Oliver. So concerned about a woman that you haven’t even thought to ask me about the death of Anthony Ivo, which I thought would have been the focus of our conversation today. I was quite prepared to barter information about Ivo’s employer for Miss Smoak’s person, but you quite threw me off with your first question today.

“Very well. I’ll be generous, kid, and explain my involvement in poor Ivo’s death sentence without your asking. I feel very sorry for your affliction and the faith you clearly have reposed in Miss Smoak, which I fear will result in great disappointment, given what I know of her.”

“Why do you persist in slandering her character?”

“Because I know it better than you do. How long have you known Miss Smoak, Oliver? You met her at my party, didn’t you? She has a history of reneging on agreements, be it the promise of devotion she offered to poor Mr Seldon, or for what is owed to me. What did she promise you? I can almost guarantee you she will not deliver.”

They had gone in circles throughout this conversation, never once centering in on what Oliver most desired to know. Sensing that he would not get anywhere pursuing the question of Felicity’s disappearance in this conversation with Slade, Oliver asked about Anthony Ivo instead, privately vowing to check with Barry about Mr Seldon.

“I checked with my secretary about the dates in the Starling file after you left. It turns out that Ivo took a private assignment without my knowledge or consent on the night of June the Fifteenth, 1807. Poor Ivo then made a very greedy mistake, when he sought to record those hours of service to get extra wages from me, which is why I arranged for a birthday surprise when an assassin known only to me as Stellmoor asked for a list of targets in the underworld. A surprise that you nearly ruined, I must say, by your inability to respect the privacy of others.”

Oliver ignored the throwaway comment that Slade had made; it was a ruse to distract him again. “Who hired Ivo?”

Slade grinned, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together. “At last you get the point. I propose a trade, kid. Deliver to me Miss Smoak’s person once you find her – assuming you find her before I do, of course – and I will give you the identity of the man who hired Anthony Ivo.”

“No,” said Oliver firmly. “Miss Smoak is not for negotiation – if she wanted to stay in your employ, she would have.”

“And to think you’re the one who owes me the favour…” Slade pursed his lips. “Then find me something I want as badly as I do the work that she owes to me, kid, and we can talk. You have my address in town; I return to Cambridge next week.”

“I’m told she was working on a cipher for you,” said Oliver carefully. “Can’t someone else write it?”

If he could free Felicity of her debt to Slade, she would have one less enemy for him to contend with as he searched for her.

Slade chortled. “There is only one Felix Sherwood, Oliver. Anything written by another person will be deciphered by her before it can do the damage it needs to for the investment to make sense. That is the reputation that she has in the underworld, and I daresay it is the one true thing about her.”

A scratch at the door interrupted their conversation, before the Starling House butler entered to say, “Begging your grace’s pardon, but Mr Allen requests that your grace be present in the library at first convenience.”

Rising to his feet, Slade put his hat back on and bowed. “I better take my leave then. I bid you good day, your grace, and I hope to hear favourable news soon.”

Oliver felt a new wave of frustration mounting in him as Slade left the room. His labours had been for naught, she remained lost to him, despite the fact that he had just found her, and Slade’s contribution to the search for his father was more cryptic than helpful. His weariness and hunger reared their heads now, reminding him of the sensible nature of Diggle’s advice, words that rang in the back of his mind even as he stared through the open window at the busy streets below, as if he would be able to spy her blonde hair peeking out of a bonnet as she waited for him to come to her.

 _You will find her_ , Diggle’s voice came into his head, an affirmation to the vow that Oliver himself was making as he looked into the pale cast of light washing over the clouds that obscured the cerulean skies that were a rarity in English weather.

He raised his head to address his butler, who was waiting nervously for further instructions while his master brooded upon what next to do.

“Have some sandwiches sent to the library for Mr Allen and myself. I will be with Mr Allen shortly.”

He left to change and wash his face, so that he could be ready to find her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being understanding about letting me take a break! I stand by the statement I made that updates will be erratic but I'll still try to fit writing into my schedule. I went through three drafts with totally different events to bring you this, on occasion flirting with the idea of having Sara be the person who spoke to Felicity in the last chapter and going "Come with me if you want to live" (in my defense I had just finished 5000 words, none of which made it to the final cut because I kept feeling it didn't work even though I really liked the dialogue and characterisation there), but ultimately I went with allowing you to experience Oliver's panic. I really hope you like this chapter, mostly because I went over the final draft quite a few times with the intention that the come-back chapter mustn't be too shabby. It is titled Gone, and though I open with what can be counted as gratuitous shirtless-ness, I was also aiming to address the notion of control and hark back to Oliver's PTSD. The codename for the chapter while I was working on it was Oliver Loses His Shit, which I suppose is rather accurate.
> 
> Hal Jordan makes a cameo because of his longstanding friendship with Oliver in the comics, though I can't say I know Hal well enough to decide who would be the one egging the other on in questionably sensible feats. I always thought that Tommy would egg you on, but also stay by your side to clean up after if need be. I wonder if anyone guessed that the one-eyed man that Thea and Roy met was Deadshot as opposed to Slade? Boxing did not have the rules we are used to these days and I fully admit to watching the scene from Robert Downey Jr's first Sherlock portrayal multiple times to choreograph this scene. Sir Peter Parker, the Admiral of the Fleet mentioned, was an actual person and I was not trying to make a Spider-Man reference.
> 
> I really hope no one gets upset about Diggle's throwing suspicion on Felicity - I believe he would have done so in the situation because he's always struck me as being able to rationally consider all options, unpalatable as they are, when making a decision. Unless Lyla and baby Sara are threatened, of course. I think my version of Slade is a little more chatty than the show's portrayal, but it should now be clear that we mustn't believe just everything he says and I actually find it very fun embellishing the 'truth' when I write Slade's lines.
> 
> Cooper has gotten a new name because I cannot conceive of how someone would be called Cooper during the 1810s save as a last name or nickname. Since his name is inspired by the character on Big Bang Theory, who has the middle name Lee, I went with Lee Seldon at first, but the use of Lee as a first name only came into currency following the American Civil War and the future General Robert E. Lee was only born in 1807. So we are left with Leander as a name, which gave me the opportunity to throw in a reference to Hero and Leander. As further clarification, John Keats has yet to write his La Belle Dame Sans Merci but there is a 15th century poem by the same name written by Alain Chartier.
> 
> Lastly, would anyone mind if I change the rating of this from T to M to be safe in light of what I've planned for Chapter 28? Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely weekend ahead of you! xxx


	28. Misprision

It was commonly held that in the Season of 1784, Miss Moira Dearden became the greatest success that London had ever seen on the marriage mart. Her impending marriage to the thirteenth Duke of Starling and how she had taken the _ton_ by storm were all that was said about the enchanting duchess-to-be, not a single conversation failed to include a variant of effusive pronouncement on her grace’s charismatic beauty and exquisite taste.

Granted, this occurred at the height of Georgian excess, when the _ennui_ -laden aristocracy was seized with a _zeitgeist_ such that they considered morals something of a bad jest.

What the _ton_ did not know, was that in the Season of 1784, Moira committed the gravest error in her life: she allowed herself to deal straightforwardly with her new husband. It was inevitable. The young Miss Dearden was still an innocent for all the worldly posturing that the _ton_ had been so intrigued with and deceived by, and she genuinely believed that one could lie to the rest of the world but truth was essential between husband and wife.

Moira Dearden, now Her Grace the Duchess of Starling, told Robert Queene, Thirteenth Duke of Starling, everything. She revealed to him the flaws on her form: the freckles that spread across her left side like a constellation of russet, or the scar on her right hip, a relic of reckless horseback riding in her erstwhile youth. She confided in him her hopes, her dreams, and her fear that after a lifetime of battling the _ton_ for dominance, Moira would be alone, to die surrounded by all the trappings of her triumph but without a stalwart supporter by her side.

He did not say anything in response that night, but remained alluringly mysterious in their marriage as he was in his courting of her. They were together for eight years, before she found out about his string of inamoratas, uninterrupted since before he even knew her.

Moira did not cry after she discovered the betrayal, neither did she act against the woman that had been as helpless to Robert’s charm as she had been. What Moira did was to swear her allegiance to the following principles of living: that survival required one to remain opaque to those about you, and that one could not allow oneself to forget the potency of absolute truth, or trusting another with it.

Truth in its raw form was the acrid taste at the back of one’s mouth, but in carefully cultivated and proportioned doses, it could create pleasing possibilities to whet even the most particular of appetites, or turn a starving man away from the most sumptuous of feasts.

And never again would Moira Dearden Queene offer bitterness when she could give a saccharine drug that enslaved another, and protected her self.

With the effluxion of time, the duchess had only reinforced her belief in those principles, sedulously concealing or embellishing pieces of the truth where appropriate. It was thus that she considered her current misfortunes as a wife and mother divine retribution, steeped in irony and perhaps the result of fate’s malcontent at the feats she had accomplished through concealing the total truth to begin with.

It appeared that removing himself from her side and then damning the family and their every advantage was not spite enough for Robert. In death he still sought to perpetuate his treachery through the son he had given to her.

Having recovered from her initial shock and anger at the possibility of Oliver taking up Robert’s mantle, Moira was more than willing to do anything to protect her own again, just as she had five years ago. The trouble was that she needed to first know the truth before she could twist it to serve her purposes.

Following Oliver’s dismissal of her that morning, six long hours had passed, which she confirmed as she darted a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. As she waited she went about the mundane domesticity that occupied a woman’s day, all the while stewing in her indecision about the way in which she would begin this necessary conversation with her son.

_How did one ask one’s son if he had preferred the cause of his dead father as opposed to his very much alive mother and sister?_

As the clock chimed the indubitable fact that her son had deferred their talk for yet another hour it was finally relayed to the duchess that the duke had returned to Starling House at noon with a guest named Mr Bartholomew Allen, and that they were presently ensconced in the library.

A stab of alarm rose in her chest.

Mr Allen was famous for two traits, and she did not think it was his rather poor dancing skills that Oliver sought to consult at present.

She put away her knitting and headed straight for the library, her gait a measured rhythm such that the sound of her every step was a reverberant knell drumming in the miscalculation she had made last night.

Moira took in a single breath before she entered the library.

Four men were presently in the room, including her son and Mr Allen, the latter of which was stooped over next to one of the bookshelves behind the desk used by the Smoak woman. John Diggle and the lad she had kept on as a stable boy after he was caught attempting to steal a horse from the Starling stables stood slightly behind the duke, too absorbed at the damning spot to which Mr Allen had been pointing at. For some odd reason, Roy Harper was wearing Starling livery even though she had not been informed of any promotion given to the boy.

“…residue of tallow wax consistent with my conclusion…” Mr Allen trailed off as he laid eyes on her, and hastily stood to bow a greeting. “Your grace!”

Mr Allen’s mention of leftover wax caught her interest at once. Her gaze travelled to the spot over which Mr Allen had bent and she spotted the evidence of her carelessness last night. A twinge of annoyance touched her mood – she thought she had cleaned away all incriminating traces of the truth, but it appeared her acuity for concealment still paled in comparison to Mr Allen’s skill in observation.

The weight of the men’s regard was fully on her person now, but she knew her expression betrayed nothing of her involvement in the conjecture Mr Allen was just putting forth. She offered a polite smile to the company. “I came regarding the matter I mentioned this morning, duke.”

No flicker of recognition flashed in the pale blue depths of Oliver’s eyes. “Now is not a good time for us to speak in private, mother.”

She studied the red limning his eyes, the shadow of a beard that covered his jaw. “What have you discovered, Mr Allen?” she asked instead.

The young man darted a glance he presumably thought to be furtive at her son before answering with, “Someone dropped a tallow candle whilst standing behind that desk last night. The candle rolled across the carpet and only stopped its traverse to the other side of the room because it struck this bookcase here. That same someone was no servant, or at least whoever cleaned up was competent servant, your grace, because the removal of wax was less than thorough. As if the person did not know where the candle had been, or had never removed wax off wood and fabric before. Judging from the splatters remaining on the edges of the desk, I’m inclined to think that the person who dropped the candle was the same height as Miss Smoak.”

It was no exaggeration to say that it was widely held amongst the _ton_ that Bartholomew Henry Allen, Esquire was singular when it came to finding the obscure and the misplaced. He was entirely right in his guesses, and Moira nodded slowly, allowing a tasteful half-smile to break out on her face, while maintaining the concerned furrow of her brows.

“I must say I am impressed, Mr Allen. And what else have you found?”

He was not above preening slightly at receiving recognition. “Whoever did pack up Miss Smoak’s things was less than thorough as well, or at least unfamiliar with where she was accustomed to keeping her things. Several letters addressed to her were tucked under the mattress and left behind, as was this.” He pulled out a miniature depicting a beautiful woman with similar colouring to Miss Smoak.

“Her mother,” said Moira, which was answered with a nod from Mr Allen.

“I believe Miss Smoak did not leave Starling House of her own will, your grace. You wouldn’t happen to have heard anything odd last night, would you?”

Her son’s valet was staring at her, as if subjecting her every reaction to scrutiny. Moira deliberately put on her best concerned expression, ratcheting up the disquietude which showed in the way her eyes widened and her hand rose slightly towards her open mouth.

“Goodness. Poor Miss Smoak. No, I didn’t hear anything at all – though I’ll certainly check with my staff. Excuse me.”

Throughout the exchange, Oliver had remained silent, his eyes trained on the damning spot that Miss Smoak and Moira had left behind, in shock and in carelessness respectively. He stirred slightly as she made to leave the library.

“Mother, could I ask if you have heard of a Leander Seldon?

Her next machinations had already begun forming in her mind, but she was rather taken aback at the sudden question. “The Cooper boy?”

Oliver frowned in confusion.

“He’s Leander Cooper Seldon, or at least he would have been, were he still alive,” she explained. “His father – a country squire – married below him and had to take on the extra family name of Cooper, though it never did quite pass down to the next generation, if I recall rightly.”

“You are correct, your grace,” injected Mr Allen. “Cooper was at Cambridge with me.”

“Where is he now?” inquired her son.

This Moira answered. “The boy himself is deceased, I’m afraid to say. It’s said that he contracted consumption and was sent down to warmer climes in the winter of 1809. There was news of a death.”

She saw her son’s face crumple for a second, into the same expression he had made at three years of age when she informed him that Robert was not coming back for Christmas to spend time with the family, that his father had work to do and so could not teach him how to ride like he had promised to. At that moment she realised her mistake in the whole affair.

“Your grace,” put in Mr Allen hastily. “There is something here you may want to see.”

It was a long time before Moira could slip out of the room. She did not know how long it would be before Mr Allen’s skills would rouse Oliver’s suspicions about her again.

It would appear she had underestimated the importance of Felicity Smoak to her son, and this was not how she wanted to begin the conversation about what Robert had divulged to Oliver of his purposes at all.

A housemaid was going about her duties when Moira entered the duchess’s bedroom, and the girl jumped as the Duchess of Starling showed herself. Moira studied the nightgown made of white silk in her rough hands, stained with blood now dried from last night. It had been hastily stuffed into a chest, after the duchess had scrubbed away the blood and tallow wax off the library floor with her own hands last night.

“Beg yer pardon, yer grace!” sputtered the housemaid, backing toward the yellow wallpaper, mortification crossing her features. “I be cleanin’ ‘e room, an’ –”

Loring, Moira’s maid, entered the room then, and she stopped short at the tableaux before casting a questioning glance at her mistress.

Moira let herself smile back calmly. “I seem to have made a mess last night. Loring, kindly see to it that this nightgown is burnt.”

“Yes, your grace,” said her maid, whisking it away at once.

The Duchess of Starling threw up a hand to stop the housemaid from leaving. Her writing paper remained as it had been left on the small writing desk she used, and she addressed a message to the only person she could think of who was better than she was at hiding things.

As she reached for her seal and wax, she read the three words she had inscribed onto the paper again: _Tempest. Kill her._

Moira folded up the letter and bade the housemaid go to Merlyn House at once. 

* * *

The road to Bath was paved with rather unskillful highwaymen.

Sara drew back the walking stick she was accustomed to carrying about and adjusted the pale blonde wig she had pinned to her head before she inspected her work: three burly creatures that were taken down as easily as they had been throwing their weight about whilst demanding that the valuables owned by the women in the carriage be handed into their meaty paws.

From behind her, Helena peered over her shoulder, disgust for the men stamped across her features.

“You should have just let me shoot them,” said the former opera singer.

Sinking back into her seat, Sara shut the door of their vehicle and struck the roof to indicate that they were to continue advancing towards the city.

“I would rather leave the business of strewing bodies about the roads of England to the fictions that Killer Frost creates,” she said, resting the walking stick on the empty plush seat next to her.

Next to Helena was Cassandra, who had remained her characteristically quiet self for much of the journey from Bristol to Bath. Unlike the older women, Cassandra travelled well, and never once clamoured for the vehicle to stop so she could have a break from the rattle of wheels scurrying across uneven dirt roads. Secured to their chaise was a wagon of flowers selected from their hothouse, to be delivered to their clients.

Helena crossed her arms and rolled her eyes at Sara’s reply. “Oh certainly, leave the fun to the other Birds of Prey while you guard these stupid flowers as they make their way into the homes of pampered aristocrats and gentlewomen, not to mention force us to go with you.”

“ _The Canary’s Posies_ does provide some income for our work,” Sara pointed out. “It is not just a cover.”

“But you never take charge of the deliveries. And I never have to follow.”

Sara curled her fingers over her reticule, tracing the outline of the unopened letter from Lance House that had arrived from London yesterday.

“The terms when I agreed to take you under my wing were that you never leave my side without my permission, Helena.”

Her eyes flashed. “I don’t need your protection anymore, _Canary_. The Duke of Starling has gotten what he wants from me, and my life is no longer in danger.”

The real reason that Helena Bertinelli had not been allowed to return to her life in London since Ollie’s discovery of her in Bristol went beyond the covenant between them. Sara had received word from Nyssa that Helena was under suspicion of actively sympathising with the burgeoning nationalist movement in Greece. As daughter to a vizier in the Ottoman Sultan’s Imperial Council, Nyssa Raatko was more than happy to let Helena return to London so that her possible activities as a spy would be exposed and the Ottoman Empire could put her down.

Sara was a little more reluctant to send a woman to her death, even though she would rather die than betray Nyssa’s confidences.

“Be that as it may, here we are.”

They entered into the city, much to Cassandra’s delight, for the girl had never spent much time in such an environment. It was vicarious pleasure Sara felt as she witnessed the excitement shown by the child, at the way Cassandra’s eyes darted from sight to sight outside the small window of their chaise.

Bath was less of a horror than London was, much as it retained the conveniences and charms of city living.

They passed the long rows of Georgian houses rendered most neatly in honey-coloured brick and guarded by black iron grilles. Their carriage drew to a halt along Sydney Street, where Aunt Barbara kept a house ready for the Birds to use whenever they came to Bath.

It was not the most fashionable of neighbourhoods and the interior was furnished very sparsely. Cassandra ran forward to explore almost immediately, while Helena turned her nose up at the peeling wallpaper in the corner of the entrance hall. Biting back a slight smile of amusement, Sara perused the stack of letters left on a side table by the stairs.

A tersely worded message from the Gordon household indicated that her aunt expected them for dinner that evening, and there was a letter from Caitlin confirming that a body matching Donna Smoak’s description had been arranged to turn up near St Albans, on the road to London, as Sara had requested.

That left the letter from Lance House which she had yet to read.

She raised a hand to her wig instead, checking once again in a nearby mirror that it had not slipped when she crossed the threshold of the house, though of course that was ridiculous – it was not like Nyssa was here to muss her hair during their journey.

“I would like to go to the Pump Rooms while we are in Bath,” came Helena’s voice from behind her.

“Certainly not – there would be questions asked about your sudden reappearance and I most certainly am not bringing you there and leaving Cassandra behind to watch the house.”

“I highly doubt the brat will notice. And I wasn’t planning on going with you, not with this ridiculous disguise that you think will prevent people from recognising you here. I can turn up unaccompanied, you know. I’m no sheltered young miss like you were. Like you still pretend to be.”

“I beg your pardon?” Sara blinked.

Regarding the wig with a wave of her hand, Helena’s tone was almost mocking as she said, “You may call yourself Sara Raatko and have taken a woman as a lover, but you adhere to societal conventions in every other way, Canary. Your freedom is a pretense.”

Sara tried to laugh it off. “I highly doubt removing one’s bonnet in the middle of the street is the height of liberty - ”

“You know what I mean. You don’t live openly. You won’t be seen in society. Your life consists of finding pockets of space around the secrets you still keep from everyone you used to know.”

“Says the woman who has been spying for the Greek nationalist movement whilst posing as an opera singer,” Sara snapped.

Surprised by the accusation, Helena’s eyes widened slightly, before she broke into a smug grin. “I live for song and freedom, Canary – can you say the same when you hide your real life and real self away everyday?”

A protest lodged itself in her throat before sinking to depths of her gut. Sara could not answer that question. It was dishonest to say she lived for Nyssa or her work alone, for the two reasons did not lead naturally to her current reluctance to read the letter that was still in her reticule.

Sara picked her letters up and placed them methodically into her reticule. “Get dressed for dinner, Helena. Aunt Barbara has invited us to join her.”

Smirking at having had the last word on the matter, Helena disappeared up the stairs. Sara’s fingers lingered on the thin envelope bearing the message from Lance House that had been in her reticule the whole time. The seal was unmistakably the viscount’s, though the hand that had rendered the address was Laurel’s, from the slant of the words to the bold curve of each letter.

Sara traced the rosy wax that her sister had used with her thumb, pausing ever slightly as she felt every familiar indent and bump on its surface.

She blinked.

“I’m sorry, Laurel.”

Sara Lance Raatko left that letter behind and went upstairs to dress for dinner. 

* * *

“You’re unhappy,” John heard Lyla say, before she laid a hand on the curve of his cheek and smoothed her thumb over his brow. He looked up at her.

“You’re unhappy about something,” she repeated, her grey eyes softening,

John caught her fingers with his own and pressed his lips into her palm. “It’s work.”

It was strange, how he had no trouble holding back any of what he had witnessed while he was in Mysore, and she struggling to be content with her public failure as a barren wife.

Now they rarely discussed the details of what they did ever since they began working for Amanda Waller. Now they both held secrets for a living.

Lyla bent down to look him in the eye. “Work rarely bothers you like this, Johnny. This is personal.”

He stared back at her for a long while, before the ending of a sigh passed through his lips. “I have a suspicion that I cannot articulate lest it impact a personal relationship.”

“Like father and Andy?” she made a small smile, more rueful than triumphant, as shock crossed his features. “I always knew your suspicions on the matter; I wish I could give you closure by confirming or denying it. But that’s not what’s bothering you now, is it?”

What was bothering him was the way the Duchess of Starling had reacted in the library to Mr Allen’s conclusions. There was nothing inherently suspicious about the mild concern she had shown or the way she answered her son’s questions, and yet John could not shake the feeling that there was something not quite right about her disavowal of specific knowledge when it came to the subject of Felicity’s disappearance.

Or was it the worry that he privately felt for Felicity’s safety colouring his observations?

Despite his speech to Oliver that afternoon, John could not deny that he was concerned for Felicity Smoak. He was rarely wrong in his first impressions and she did seem guileless and genuinely worried for her life when they had encountered her in Cambridgeshire. Was it truly all an act for her to spy on the duke’s true motives and steal his papers?

Mr Allen’s evidence would suggest otherwise – that Felicity was taken. But by whom?

“My friends may be endangered if I don’t speak.”

There was every possibility that Oliver, or Felicity, or both of them were in peril.

“Then speak to the Duke of Starling. It’s not like you to hold things back of your own volition, Johnny.” Lyla rose to unlock the trunk that sat at the foot of her bed. “Though you may want to open with this to soften the blow.”

She plopped a thick bundle of documents onto John’s lap. It was a dossier on the previous Duke of Starling, a vast collection of documents that detailed his service to His Majesty’s interests.

The smell of her clean skin wafted into his nose as Lyla leaned over his shoulder to point at a page in the file, a tendril of her brown hair brushing his temple.

“As you can see, the thirteenth Duke of Starling was a most active part of his majesty’s government despite not being in the Cabinet.”

“Lyla, this file has details of almost every major conflict that has happened… Hell, the duke was helping with the handling of the Gordon Riots even when he was supposedly courting his duchess,” said John, scanning through the list of dates imprinted on the letters and reports adduced.

“The thirteenth Duke of Starling was an agent, with a far higher clearance than you and I. His grace was especially skilled in managing conflicts through negotiation, or perhaps more specifically, ensuring that successful negotiations happened without actually being a party.”

“But who was his grace’s partner? And this file stops in 1793 – was his grace working on anything in 1807?”

Lyla shook her head. “I’m sorry – I don’t know. I’d ask my father for more details, but that means that I need to be able to tell him why I want to know this, and Mrs Waller’s officially redeployed me such that I have no reasonable story to give… Unless you would like come to Colyton for Christmas with your family.”

Once again that evening shock coursed through his person, and the familiar heartache he felt whenever he thought of a future with Lyla came swiftly on its heels. To join her in her father’s countryseat was to declare to all who mattered that they dared to defy society. There was no question that he loved her, and that he was confident that she cared for him, but telling Sir George was another matter altogether.

“My sweet love, the amount of information in this file will take the whole six months to reconnoitre properly.”

If she was hurt by his rejection, she did not show it. “You’re not _that_ good, Johnny. Not without my help.”

He had taken her hand into his as he denied her the opportunity to declare their love to the world; every jot of his being thanked providence that she did not pull away from him now.

“So help me, oh wise and mighty Lyla…”

She snorted a laugh, and indicated the last few pages detailing the duke’s time in Paris in 1783. “You should start with Lacroix-Saint-Owen. The previous duke held a piece of property there by the name of ‘Stellmoor’…”

* * *

She could not breathe.

It was her sight that they took away first. As the blindfold came over her eyes and further obscured what little she could see in the faint moonlight that penetrated the hack, thick cords were wound round her wrists and a wad of cloth rammed into her mouth as a gag.

The restraints inspired a fit of panic, and she struggled as best as she could, to no avail. Her senses were suspended in a state of heightened fear, unable to ward off the terror that washed over her person in dreadful waves, leaving her insensible to her surroundings. She heard not the rattle of carriage wheels or the steady clip-clop of horses’ hooves as they persisted, onward and away. She would not remember how long they travelled, or how she was bodily removed from the hack and placed in a foreign environment. Only with the gradual return of her reason over time, when the edges of her visceral reaction were whittled down and she felt the pressure on her chest ease somewhat, did she begin to think again.

She was no longer bleeding, or at least the blood on her forehead had since dried up.

From the muffled sounds outside her wheeled cage and the occasional lengthy pauses it took in its journey, she sensed they were still in London. She tried squirming in her bonds, to no avail, though she ascertained the fact that she was not alone in the hack.

She tried to articulate a plea for help. The dry fabric in her mouth obscured what sound she could produce, and she broke into spasms of coughing from the attempt. Still her companion remained dispassionately reclined in the seat next to her.

Finally her coughs subsided, and she was still in an itinerant point of anonymity making their way across a city’s winding streets. _Nobody noticed a hack travelling about London_ , she thought again, as she had when she elected to leave Starling House without any struggle.

Enough of her blood had been spilled and enough threats had already been directed at Oliver when she made that decision, and she had calculated that the author of her abduction would have no reason to cause her lasting harm insofar she could offer the service of her abilities.

She was unsure how it long it was before the hack drew to a complete stop, on a relatively quiet street or part of the city. The sound of a heavy step and the slight rocking of the hack told her that her companion had left the vehicle, and Felicity waited for her fate to come.

A rush of sooty air brushed the back of her neck as the door to the hack was flung open, and the voice that greeted her chilled her to the bone.

“O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!”

Cool lips were pressed to the tears that had begun running down her cheek: a mockery of affection, an allusion to the most famous betrayal, and a testament to her misprision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly I'm so sorry that this took so long - I went through a month of writer's block and I have the 12,000 discarded words' worth of drafts to prove it. I think I wrote at least 4 scenes that didn't make it into this chapter and every scene in was written at least 3 times. In the future if you want to chase me up I do post about my writing process on my tumblr blog so that's a good way of checking in to make sure I'm alive and working on this if you ever get anxiety. I'm really grateful to everyone who cheered me on there this month (especially Marni and Ruth, who deserve all the love for always encouraging me), and I appreciate your patience in waiting.
> 
> Just to clarify, I am still in the thick of Law school, which would probably explain a little better why I'm really busy with school work - I try as hard as I can to write but my previous 1 chapter a week schedule would not work at all. That being said hiatus for a month+ was not planned in the slightest! I'll try to update as soon as I can.
> 
> DC easter eggs in this chapter include Jean Loring's cameo (toyed with gender bending to make her a solicitor before I decided Moira needed an ally in the house and Mrs Raisa did not count), the inclusion of Cassandra Cain and the mention of Barbara Gordon (you guys realise it's Birds of Prey in Bath, right?). Sara is living in the house that the Austens occupied whilst they were living in Bath, though I did not do my research properly on its interior so take what I write about it with a pinch of salt. Helena is indeed a spy against the Ottoman Empire, which will naturally put her into conflict with Nyssa, who will appear eventually.
> 
> Diggle's section was the reason why I originally asked if you would like me to up the rating. That version of the scene did not make it in because it would have been too confusing with all that is going on in this chapter. I'm going to have to resolve a couple of them before I can properly address some of the relationship issues that just about everyone is facing in this story.
> 
> Lastly the final paragraph makes a reference to the kiss of Judas, while the line before that comes from Act 3 Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet. And yes, the reference to the anonymity of a hack is a nod to Sherlock's A Study in Pink.


	29. Tempest

He barely noticed that the flames had long died out with a pitiable sputter, that the library had grown cold and that the white light of day had since taken on the reddish hue of old bloodstains.

Barry and Roy had left for Ely with the portrait of Donna in the hopes that someone could offer information about the Smoaks, and Diggle was off to see his contact from the War Office.

She was still gone.

Sinking into the chair she had used, Oliver ran a hand over the smooth grain of her desk. The admonishment that Diggle had given him about taking care about himself rang true, as did the reminder that there was no real reason for him to be so fixated on the matter of her safety, given that the Duke of Starling had only met Miss Felicity Smoak a week ago.

But he was not. He was inexplicably worried for Felicity, sick with want for the knowledge that she was safe, and everything else seemed secondary.

Again he pulled open the drawer where his father’s papers had been stored, stared at the bottom of the drawer and the emptiness that it portended. Could she have been taken on account of the papers?

Oliver frowned, reflecting on the state of his leads before he had word of her presence in Cambridge. Prior to his complete reliance on her skills in his investigation, he had spent numerous evenings watching the _ton_ from the space of his observation room, in the hopes that surveillance would point to a greater perfidy than debauchery. Perhaps it was time to reconnect with his father’s old friends again, even if it was merely to find out if anyone would have a motive to abduct her.

He rose to his feet and set her workspace to rights, before he made for the entrance hall, with the intention of heading to his club for the night. Standing in the hall was his sister, decked in a frock of pale pink satin he had never seen before.

“Why haven’t you dressed for dinner?” enquired Thea. “Mother will be down soon and we are leaving for the Spencers’ together, aren’t we?”

As he took in her lovely face, fresh with the youth and innocence he could no longer pretend to, he felt a sharp sense of alarm. If Felicity could be abducted from his house without anyone’s knowledge, how safe would his family be when they ventured beyond the house?

“Ollie, are you all right? You’re looking at me very strangely and you haven’t said a single word since I began this conversation…” Thea trailed off, her curls tilting to the side with her head as she regarded him with concern. “Which reminds me, whatever has become of Miss Smoak? I’ve not seen her at home for the entirety of today.”

He could not ask his family to stay at Starling House, not without launching into a lengthy explanation about his true capabilities and Felicity’s past. He could not leave them here without even Roy’s knowledge of the streets to guard her, let alone Diggle’s proficiency with weapons and fighting skills.

To Thea it was probably the height of thoughtlessness when he raised his hand to her head and so mussed her coiffure, but he ignored his sister’s small cry of pique and shot her a wistful smile as he said, “I’ll come to dinner. Wait for me.”

“And Miss Smoak?”

He did not want to answer as of yet, and so he offered the first thing that came to mind. “She left to attend to an urgent family matter. I do not know when she will be back.”

Before Thea could ask more questions he returned to the duke’s bedroom and stepped into the garments prepared by Diggle as quickly as he could. There was no time to shave his jaw properly, or even to ensure that his cravat was immaculate but he was not overly concerned with impressing anyone with his appearance on such an anxious evening.

It was as he adjusted his sleeves that he sensed the presence of an intruder in the bedroom next to his. The sound of footsteps crossing the floor was too heavy to belong to a woman, and he could detect an aura of menace in the air.

Turning towards the connecting door at the side of his room, he gripped its knob hard and burst into the duchess’s bedroom.

 

* * *

 

She traced the pearls she wore, every dip and swell of the lustrous string adorning her neck. The woman that was looking back at Moira in the mirror wore a layered gown of silver embroidered gauze and gilt, and her curls were swept into an intricate mass on her head, secured with a silk ribbon.

That Duchess of Starling did not appear as if she had just sent a woman to her death, and so the duchess on this side of the mirror likely did not look guilty as well.

_It had to be done_ , she thought fiercely, peering at the reflected image of the chest at the foot of her bed, which was now securely locked and in selfish possession of its secrets, as it should.

If she had allowed the woman to live, by merely firing her or arranging for her to be sent to Newgate on some trumped up charge, there was a chance she would talk of what she might have seen, and Moira did not even trust her own maid with that particular secret, devoted as Loring was to her mistress.

Moira trusted no one with it, which was why the unforgivable act of prying into one’s employer’s private affairs resulted in that woman’s unfortunate demise.

With a sigh she rose from her seat, only to freeze with the awareness that she was no longer alone in her room.

A hooded figure garbed entirely in black stood in the open window, the curtains billowing out behind him as the cool air of twilight rushed into the room.

“Moira,” greeted Malcolm, pulling off his mask. “I thought it would be suspect if the earl paid a call in such quick succession following my last visit to Starling House.”

She forced herself to remain calm, the reflection before confirming that her efforts were outwardly successful. _Malcolm did not know_ , she told herself, even though her dread grew as the man crossed the floorboards to stand by the foot of her bed, dangerously close to the chest.

His appearance as such was not just consideration for their reputations, but meant as a warning to her, a reminder of how dangerous he truly was.

“You’re getting very careless, Moira, if you feel the need to invoke ‘Tempest’ so easily. Your request has been taken care of, though I must confess I’m not quite sure why you saw the need to arrange for a mere housemaid’s murder.”

Tempest had been their secret code word, the term used when one needed to call upon the other for a favour. Moira knew she owed Malcolm now, but she was not about to divulge a secret she was working to conceal to begin with.

_Particularly when she was certain Malcolm would not react kindly to the fact that the secret in question indicated a lack of belief in his word._

“She pried into my private affairs.” Her voice sounded even, and the brow she raised imperiously further underscored her point.

“Indeed. Before I shot her, the poor girl was nattering on about how she was very sorry for opening your private chest, and that she didn’t see a thing besides the ‘bloody gown’, which I presume to be the outcome of your decision regarding Miss Smoak last night… That brings me, of course, to the question: of what chest is she speaking? And what does said chest contain besides that gown, given that you have never been given to histrionics and would only have resorted to sending that note if your interests were severely threatened?”

As he spoke Malcolm looked her reflection intently in the eye, his hand resting idly on the chest he stood next to.

They were easy questions, and she had prepared answers for the eventuality of such questions being asked, from the day she first decided to keep this secret. Moira opened her mouth, but the sound of the connecting door opening caught her attention and she whipped her head round in time to see her son charging into the room.

Oliver’s face was forbidding, a cold expression on the precipice of rage and savagery. His eyes were locked on the open window, where the chill of the evening air hung as the sole reminder of Malcolm’s visit, the man having disappeared before her son entered.

“Your window is open,” her son finally said, his voice sounding raw, almost guttural.

“Yes,” said Moira slowly. “I thought the air too still and had Loring open a window whilst I dressed for ready for dinner. Is everything all right, Oliver?”

Oliver opened his mouth, but there was a palpable pause before he said, “I believe there is something you wished to say to me from this morning?”

He was standing in the doorway that connected her room with the duke’s bedroom as he asked that question, filling its small frame with his own large one.

Once again she saw shades of her late husband in the man that her son had become. Robert had once stood in the very same place, to inform her that he would not be coming to her room that night, or indeed ever again, if she was wont to continue questioning his comings and goings with every single female he came into contact with.

She had never been able to convince Robert to act in any way he did not already desire to, and she rather doubted her persuasive abilities in respect of her son now. She needed Oliver to be honest, more honest than his father or indeed his mother ever had been.

“I wanted to speak to you,” she began, resisting the urge to clutch the edge of the vanity desk behind her for support. “It’s about your father.”

“Father?”

She could see him freeze slightly, sense him recoil.

“Yes, your father. We’ve never spoken of what happened that night, Oliver, and it…occurred to me recently that I need to know. Please.”

That last word contained a wealth of unutterable truths, ones that she did not dare to broach unless he made the first move. She watched his forehead crinkle, the creases an echo of the man she now asked him to remember. She saw the usual intensity of his pale blue eyes ebb away, and his voice was small when he finally replied to her query.

“It’s a difficult memory for me, mother. I don’t think I quite remember all of it, or if my mind even wants to.”

“Did he suffer?” she asked, judging it a suitable prelude to the more pressing question about whether Robert had charged Oliver with any specific mission before he died.

Oliver looked her in the eye as he said, “No. Father’s death was instant – right after the wheel of our carriage came off and we lurched to the side. He did not suffer.”

_He was lying_.

That was indeed the official account of what had befallen the previous duke and his heir five years ago – that the axle of the Queene carriage had been faulty. Malcolm had said as much to Moira, when he had first held himself out to investigate the accident while she grieved, but the evidence Moira had quietly amassed of the carriage’s remains, which presently lay in the locked chest at the foot of her bed contradicted this account heavily.

The purported accident resulted in the overturning of the Queene carriage. Its door to had been crushed, which suggested that another contraption of comparable size and weight was rammed into its side to instigate the accident, though of course no other vehicle had ever been reported found at the site of the accident.

For the past five years she had known that there had been no deaths when the Queene carriage first overturned, for the state of the debris indicated that the impact of the carriage’s overturning was not large enough to crush its passengers, and it was unlikely than men in the pink of health as her husband and son had been would have perished by the mere fall of their vehicle to its side. More importantly, she had also known that Robert had been murdered, and that her son likely the unfortunate casualty of his father’s sins.

Only she never thought that the extent of Robert’s taint on her son’s life would stretch this far, and indeed possibly further.

She did not want to give up on her son as of yet. Folding her arms across her chest, she asked for truth once again. “Did your father say anything to you before he died?”

_Something that he needed his son to accomplish, perhaps?_

There was a multitude of dread accumulating in her heart in the precious seconds before Oliver’s reply, and she felt the weight of his regard as he studied her reaction to the words he said.

“Responsibility,” said Oliver, and she tried very hard not to flinch. “Father spoke of my responsibilities, given what had just passed at Starling House before he came to fetch me… He thought I was remiss in my duties as a Queene, mother, and I have to say that he is still right, given my recent behaviour since I’ve returned.

“I’ve not been helping Thea with her first Season, and I’ve been fixated on my own life. Let me come with you to dinner, mother, and I’ll start showing my face in society again.”

It was an answer any other mother would have been ecstatic to hear, but all Moira had established was that her son lied as easily as she did, and that her son held secrets, possibility as many secrets as she did, whether one of them was a clandestine mission that Robert had entrusted him with.

The clock chimed then; she was reminded that they were long due at the Spencers’, and she rushed him downstairs where Thea was waiting impatiently.

_Her inquiry had not resulted in naught_ , she thought, as her children entered the Queene carriage and they began the short ride towards their plans for the evening. _With Oliver’s decision to remain close to them she could keep an eye on her son, and so discern his true purpose in returning to London._

At the first bump of the wheels on a rather uneven road Oliver appeared uncomfortable in the seat across hers, turning his head to the side to focus on the world beyond the window paneling in the door. He raised a hand to his mouth then, and the glint of his signet ring caught the soft illumination of the moon for a brief instant.

_Starling_ , Moira thought.

It was the Starling legacy that she sought to preserve, to steer away from the perverted path that Robert had sent it down, in his demise and decay.

 

* * *

 

The hooded blue eyes meeting her own as the blindfold was ripped off her face were a cruel reminder of the tricks fate loved to play on that quintessence of dust.

Felicity stared into the face of the man she had once loved. For all her regrets about the memories that they shared, never had she thought to think of what would pass should Leander Cooper Seldon would appear before her once again, and yet there he indubitably was, from the sardonic twist of his lips to the mole to the left of his mouth.

He was leaning against a little table at the side of the room, his posture indolent, as if he had been waiting for quite some time. The flames in the fireplace by their side crackled; all the while his eyes never left hers.

_It was not possible_.

She did not notice whom it was that untied her, or the blood that flooded into her numbed limbs as the bonds that once restrained her were cut away. As her captors stepped away to leave the room, Cooper shifted slightly forward and she could hear the floorboard under his foot creak, which meant that he was indeed corporeal and not some demented figment of her imagination.

She opened her mouth, but “You died…” was all she could say, the dryness of her throat producing a scratchier timbre than her normal voice. “They told me...”

The corners of his mouth lifted to reveal his teeth – a grin – but she instinctually studied his eyes for the evidence of his mirth.

There was none.

Her mother had once said that those eyes had a bit of the devil in them; certainly Felicity could see no goodwill for her in the intensity of his regard now, not even the slightest sliver of joy at their reunion.

“Cooper,” she breathed, reaching towards him before the waves of her doubt could crash overhead and induce her withdrawal of that hand.

He caught her fingers with his own before she could touch his face, the grip he used vise-like. It hurt her, but the pain confirmed what she needed to know. That he was alive. That he had not died for her sake like she had believed him to.

At last he spoke, and the voice she had already recognised in the hack intoned, “They also say you never forget your first love, poppet.”

_Poppet_. The term of endearment he had used, now cast out as an epithet of disgust.

If ever any person enquired of her how she would feel upon seeing him again, after he had gone to die for her in 1809, she would have responded with guilt, with relief, with happiness, not the shock and confusion that were washing over her person at present.

“Wh-How…” she began, her mind reeling in her attempt to understand how it was he could be alive and standing before her now in the place of her abductor.

The sound of a throat being cleared interrupted her, and at the door behind them stood the man that had taken her from Starling House, dressed in an evening coat of dark blue, and bearing a handsome cane made of mahogany she recognised from her time at his house in Cambridgeshire.

“How kind of you to join us at last, Felicity,” Slade said in his distinctive rasp, sauntering into the room as he perused the scene with bemusement.

He had worn the same expression then, when he snatched Oliver’s papers out of her hands last night and threatened to burn them had she not walked out of the house with him at that very instant.

Presently Slade tucked his cane under his arm as he came to a stop before her. “Did you enjoy your journey?”

With a cry, Felicity twisted her body round to stand between the men, even though her right hand was caught in Cooper’s. “Stay away! Cooper, you have to leave at once – Slade Wilson is not to be trusted!”

A moment of silence rang in the air at the close of her impassioned plea, and the alarm she had first felt when Slade entered the room dissolved into horror as Slade’s single eye flashed with wicked humour.

From behind her, her hand was twisted up against her back, and sharp pain ran up her arm. She had not even the presence of mind to react, so great was the consternation that she felt as every finger of Cooper’s free hand closed hard over her shoulder.

His breath brushed her ear as he intoned, “Now, now, poppet. It’s very uncharacteristic of you to speak poorly of others. Particularly when they are my friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a lot of rewrites, because I've been experiencing difficulties with the arrangement of my plot points and ensuring that things flow. When I first drafted this chapter it actually included a Laurel point of view (excluded for tonal reasons) and picked up the Stellmoor thread where we left of. Obviously this did not pander out but I feel happy about giving Moira's thread a better end before I turn my attention to something else.
> 
> I had a lot of fun dressing the women for this. Thea wears a dress that looks very much like https://www.augusta-auction.com/component/auctions/?view=lot&id=4467&auction_file_id=8, while Moira wears something that looks very much like http://www.gogmsite.net/empire-napoleonic-and-roman/subalbum-empress-josephine/albumette-dresses-and-cloth/ca-1810-josephine-dress-of-.html. It should be noted that I intended Thea to wear a string of coral beads round her neck when Oliver first runs into her; it has been omitted because I reckoned he wouldn't actually notice these things unless it's Felicity wearing the necklace.
> 
> A question I think everyone will be asking is why Moira arranged for the housemaid to be killed, if the chest only contains rusty carriage remains. Or does it? When I planned this I didn't expect as many people to (1) think that it was Felicity whom she arranged to have killed, (2) react with such shock. Moira's a very morally grey character and I think I envisioned her interpretation of this course of action as necessary. Blackmail would have been a more logical first course of action, though blackmail is only as good as the amount of information you possess. Moira could have threatened the housemaid, but I was a bit lazy about giving her a backstory (sorry) to create blackmail material, didn't want to detract from the subplot, and I guess I can spoiler you all now and tell you that the maid isn't dead at this point of the story. Moira and Malcolm were first shown not to be buddy-buddy with each other and there is good reason for it - they do not trust the other, though they happily work together when necessary. What makes them fascinating to write is the way they wield the defence of necessity for their misdeeds.
> 
> 'Poppet' became a thing because I thought 'babe' was a bit too modern. Did anyone guess that Slade was bluffing when he came to Starling House to see Oliver? I threw in a Hamlet reference in this chapter, and I spent a good hour of my life trying to find a quote from The Tempest to fit into the chapter, to no avail, mostly because I took out a section that I didn't think fit into this chapter. In any case, because I don't throw away drafts (the document where I keep all these extracts stretches 82 pages as of today) I may get to indulge in more Shakespeare! The next chapter will probably be out before Christmas (I'm going on holiday for 2 weeks in December, which is when I can get a lot of writing done because I'm not supposed to work when on holiday and I get very inspired when I travel), so I hope you enjoyed this and that you have a lovely November! :)


	30. Doubts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying something new where I share with you what music I worked to so you can have it in the background while you read this if you so desire. I started with Dario Marianelli's soundtrack for Anna Karenina (2012), and then switched over to the Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell soundtrack when the point of view changes. Let me know if you like having this - I'll only be sharing what I listen to if I think it improves the quality of the reading experience.

As was most befitting of her initial ambitions for the occasion, Mrs Catherine Spencer’s table was intended to impress. Every bit of china on display was adorned with the blue-on-white of Minton’s willow pattern, and every curlicue in the silverware was gleaming by virtue of the painstaking efforts of her servants. In the soup tureens was a viscous turtle soup, accompanied by cucumber cruet, sweetbread au jus, oyster pâté, succulent lamb cutlets, and turbot glazed with a rich lobster sauce that just teased the palette’s anticipation for the second course. And last but not least, seated at the table would be a selection of distinguished members of the _ton_ , paeans of birth and virtue and suitable counterpoints for the lavishness of the feast planned.

Unfortunately for Mrs Catherine Spencer, her guest list had been planned and confirmed before what was now widely known as the Punch-Tossing Incident, which had arisen between Lady Thea and Lady Charlotte on Monday.

While it would not have been untoward for Mrs Spencer to revoke one of those invitations, Lady Charlotte was her niece, while the Duchess of Starling still held sway as a patroness at Almack’s. Perhaps what was more pressing was the fact that most of the _ton_ had yet to decide which of the two women to side in the dispute, or if the Punch-Tossing Incident was even cause for drawing such lines at all, and her dinner was the watershed first event when both chits would be in attendance since the Wests’ soirée on Monday. Since the gossip broke out that both ladies would be in attendance that evening, the event had been the talk of the _ton_ , as betting books and scandal sheets alike awaited the reports of their conduct with bated breath.

As the last guest to arrive passed into the orange glow of the candle-lit dining room, they all took their seats. Thea concentrated on subduing her natural vivacity, as her mother had instructed her to during their journey from Starling House. It was imperative that Thea be seen as blameless in the entire course of events. At this time when scrutiny was especially focused upon her person, she was to behave entirely like the milksop miss a debutante was supposed to be, never mind the hum of excitement that she felt at the inclusion of her brother in the party, or the questions she still longed to put to him. Moira too had come prepared to turn the full force of her charm towards her dining companions, but the Duke of Starling himself appeared ignorant of his family’s plans in his conduct.

Across the table, next to Mrs Spencer, sat her brother, uncharacteristically taciturn even given the usual enigmatic charm he affected with his polite but precise replies in social discourse. She was glad he was there, of course, the absence of the duke would have been detrimental to her chances of coming out top in the _ton_ ’s estimation that night, but even the cursory glance of a stranger would impute a curmudgeonliness to the Duke of Starling’s bearing. His manners tonight did Thea’s cause little help, and with the ending of the first course it became immediately apparent that the particular assortment of guests Mrs Spencer had invited to dine with her that evening had already made up their minds to support Lady Charlotte before they had even arrived. All though dinner she was left at the periphery of conversations ensuing about her; they neither spoke directly to her or gave a substantial reply to whatever she offered to their conversations.

 _Perhaps she had flown too close to the sun for too long_.

It was in the vested interests of other families, less noble, less rich, for Lady Thea Queene to fall from the precipice of unprecedented success she had enjoyed for all of her debut. Before the Punch-Tossing Incident there had been no doubts as to her desirability on the marriage mart; now there was an opportunity for other debutantes to shine in the wake of her tarnished status.

 _The ton could all – what was that word that Oliver and Tommy dropped about whenever they thought she wasn’t listening? – sod off_ , she thought, but Moira’s daughter would never allow any of the dismay she felt show on her face, and she ensconced herself amongst the female guests with her head held high whilst the men remained in the dining room for cheroots and the like. Whilst no one spoke directly to Thea, she kept an unwavering smile pasted across her lips, watching for the way her coral dress with their matching string of beads caught the envy of all who were present, noting the furnishings of the parlour and mentally rearranging all of the furniture to her tastes. Only when she tired of the exercise did she finally allow her mind to broach the matter of Felicity’s mysterious disappearance from Starling House, thus breaking the cardinal rule that Moira had set at the start of her Season: to never take her attention off the immediate surroundings.

Felicity’s disappearance had bothered her all through the day, and the urge to ask questions chafed at her insides, as did the curious inchoate notion that something untoward had befallen the woman.

Her evidence for this was scant, first stemming from the silence between midnight and dawn last night. Thea had always been a light sleeper and an early riser, and many a time had the creak of the floorboards just outside her room jolted her awake or disturbed the peace of her morning as she got ready to ride. Unfortunately for her, anyone who wished to access the attic above or the rooms at the end of the corridor invariably needed to pass Thea’s room, and she remembered the sound of Felicity’s footsteps the first night the woman stayed in Starling House.

But Thea had not heard a single creak all of the previous night, even though she distinctively remembered that Felicity had left Starling House with only a reticule after dinner. Felicity could not have returned to her room between dinner and dawn – it was highly unlikely she even knew where the servants’ staircase was, and she had never used it before in her short time living at Starling House. Yet her room had been devoid of personal effects when Thea popped in at dawn, in the hopes of pestering the older woman into joining her for a morning ride across Rotten Row, and it was evident that her bed had not been slept in.

All Thea managed to garner from the two footmen guarding the entrance hall at night was that ‘Miss Smoak had left almost immediately after returning in a hack at about midnight’. Moira had displayed neither sanctimony nor delectation at Felicity’s apparent evanescence but instead chided her daughter for encouraging the spread of wild rumours, and changed the subject immediately.

The sudden appearance of Mr Allen at Starling House all afternoon was also curious indeed. Thea had heard something of Mr Allen’s unorthodox hobby of sleuthing, and that was undoubtedly what the man was doing when she spotted him sprawled across the ground in the library that afternoon, turning over the carpet with a gloved hand under Oliver’s watchful eye.

Finally there was the way Oliver had responded when Thea finally asked him what had become of Miss Smoak. All through the day the ensuing mystery mounted slowly into a suspicion that something was rotten in the house she called home, but Oliver’s reaction had thrown her squarely into the realm of conviction with respect to the possibility that something was very wrong with Felicity’s sudden departure. Her brother had come into the entrance hall from the library, his hand at his side and fingers rubbing together in a familiar movement she always believed a mimicry of the way he nocked an arrow shaft to a bow. Just as she mentioned ‘Miss Smoak’, he looked squarely at her, and at that moment she glimpsed a mournful fear appear in her brother’s eyes, before he burrowed back behind a wall of inscrutability. After that Thea had the distinct feeling he was not truly paying attention to their conversation; he looked at her, and through her at once, as if she were an apparition of partial substance in the hallways of his thoughts.

There had been something strange about his reply, but over and above that her impression was that Oliver was unsettled. And it was abundantly clear to her that he remained unsettled now, when the male guests joined the rest of the company. Standing a few paces behind everyone, the duke surveyed the space of the parlour as he entered, in an assessment not of the guests’ worth, but of the exits and entrances, and the way the furniture was arranged. His fingers twitched slightly at every shadow, his shoulders stiffened whenever someone approached him. Instead of joining any of the conversations breaking out across the room, the Duke of Starling took his post at a window, giving every impression that he was his island of aloof reticence in that veritable sea of society. Ever so often he would turn his eye towards the darkness outside, his brow furrowing slightly, as if to make out something, or someone there.

The man that had returned from the dead may have been more withdrawn and laconic than the Ollie she remembered, but he had never before held himself in that wary manner in a public setting. She was very certain that something was wrong.

Thea rose and made her way towards her brother, but she was foiled. The pressure of a hand curling itself around her elbow caught her attention and halted her mid-step, and she turned to look up into Lord Chase’s eyes.

“I have wanted to ask you all night how you are, my lady,” said Lord Chase solicitously, even as he shifted his body slightly so as to obscure the his hold on her from the rest of the room. “Especially in light of dinner.”

He had been sitting on the far end of the dining table, near Oliver, as befitted his rank. “I thought the food was superb.”

He simpered. “You know what I mean, my lady. Would you take a turn about the room with me?”

From the corner of her eye, a young matron approached Oliver to ask him a question, and she saw her brother struggle to approach polite geniality. Thea herself had to rescue her present social situation from its ignominy, and folded her free hand into the crook of the young lord’s elbow, even as her mind was on the forbidding expression Oliver was targeting at the darkness outside.

“Certainly, my lord.”

They glided evenly about the room, no doubt drawing a few raised eyebrows, and a rather obvious scowl from Lady Charlotte herself. Sometime between the third and fourth step they took, his lordship placed the weight of his hand on hers, and Thea cast her eyes down to examine the sight, the fresh memory of another similar intrusion into her personal space turning up in her mind.

Unlike the not-a-stable-boy, the young lord did not remove his hand from her when she looked at it. Lifting her lashes, Thea noted the way Lord Chase’s pupils were dilated – he was looking at her with a hungry interest that suggested the intimacy he had taken was the prelude to much more in his mind. He stroked the back of her palm then; the foreign sensation elicited surprise in her, and her lips parted slightly.

But surprise aside, she only felt detached interest at the naughtiness of it all. To be sure, the sensation of his fingers on the back of her hand was rather nice, just like the time Tommy’s rather short-lived dog laid his head on her lap when she was five. Thea was not prone to histrionics, but she had always thought that an intimacy such as this was supposed to produce more than her lukewarm awareness that the person next to her was a living, breathing man.

She corrected the thought immediately. She _knew_ that she should have been experiencing palpitations of the heart, at the very least; this had not been a problem yesterday.

Just yesterday her heart had pounded, and the skin on the back of her hand had tingled under the heat of Roy’s touch. For a split second there had been a conflagration burning through her body, and then he had snatched his hand back abruptly, and she had felt the loss of him at once. It had taken every ounce of her composure to affect a calmness she did not feel when she directed the conversation back to Jackson’s Saloon in the constricting space of the hack they were in.

In comparison, Lord Chase’s hand was just…there. Palpable, inoffensive, the lukewarm evidence of a living, breathing lordling standing next to her.

Perhaps the layer of their gloves and the thick wool of Lord Chase’s sleeve was a ward against the forbidden sensations that she should have been feeling. Or perhaps she was distracted, her nagging suspicions about Felicity close to the forefront of her mind.

She refused to think of the possibility that her reaction of the day before had been because the person touching her then was her not-a-stable-boy.

“It is not fair; what is happening to you,” declared Lord Chase solemnly and interrupting her reverie; his eyes trained on their surroundings as if he had not just taken an intimacy without asking. “I shall rally my friends together, and it will be known that you have been wronged at this dinner.”

 _He was speaking of her feud with Lady Charlotte_ , Thea realised belatedly. “I would be most grateful, my lord.”

They stopped at the settee where Moira was seated then, and the rest of the evening passed with little controversy, save for the blunt pain in her temples whenever her mother mentioned the need to recoup her social advantages during what was left of the Season. It was only after she sank into the mattress of her bed, her hair undone and her body pressed in a simple nightgown, that the reason for her disbelief in Oliver’s answer struck her.

Her brother had mentioned Felicity’s needing to attend to an urgent family matter. But when Moira inquired as to the older woman’s family yesterday morning, Felicity had answered that her mother had recently passed away, and that she had no other family to speak of.

Thea sat up. Either Oliver or Felicity had been lying. And even though the bonds of blood compelled her to side with her brother, in her heart it was the Duke of Starling that she suspected of perfidy.

Tearing to her feet, she made for the duke’s bedchamber, intent on confronting him with her discovery. As the door swung open to reveal the room’s inhabitants, her eyes fell upon the half-clothed figure of her brother, who was in the midst of taking a shirt from his attending valet.

“…was an agent of the Crown…” Mr Diggle trailed off, sensing her intrusion and turning to face her a second or two after Oliver’s quicker reaction.

In different circumstances she would have had the presence of mind to ask Mr Diggle at once of what he was speaking. Instead, eyes widened, Thea felt rooted to the ground at the doorway. Her shock was a dizzying event that suffused her person, mixing with the pain that her imagination spiked within her heart with every second she could see the brutal, white scars covering Oliver’s body.

“What…how did you get these…”

She could not say it – how was it possible for a man to be hurt so? As she hung in hesitation her brother directed a meaningful look to his valet, and Mr Diggle excused himself at once. With the echoes of his valet’s leaving footsteps fading into silence, Oliver turned away from her, his fingers searching for the hem of the shirt needed obscure his scars from her eyes as soon as possible.

Her feet must have moved faster than her mind could register, for the next thing she knew a fistful of her brother’s shirt was in her hands, and she was thwarting his attempt to shield her from fathoming the violence required to mark someone like this.

“What happened to you?” Her voice was barely a whisper, her question much less a demand than a plea that what she could see, that what she was afraid to touch, was only a trick of the light and that her brother had not suffered what he must have.

Oliver did not respond. His eyes were shuttered and cold, their blue the elusive parting betwixt the clouds in an overcast winter sky. He had tensed under her perusal, his gaze fixed on an indistinct point behind her, his mouth blade-like in the thinning of his lips.

“Ollie,” she said, the familiar name of their collective youth this time a plea to him. “Did…this happen to you during the five years?”

He raised his free hand, and pulled his shirt out of her slackened hold so he could finally cover himself. And then he finally looked at her, but his eyes did not soften, and his voice was hard and measured when he finally spoke.

“It would behoove you to knock the next time you wish to find me in my private quarters, Thea. I understand that you’re experiencing distress at the sight of a man’s body, given your innocence as an ingénue that only came out this Season, but I will not apologise when it is your fault for barging into a man’s room with no notice. Now why are you not abed at this time of the night?”

Rejection stung her cheeks and the tips of her fingers, at every instance where his patronising remonstration stressed her youth, her inexperience, her sex – every trait that pointed to the chasm between them as ample reason for his unwillingness to confide in her. She might have been glaring at him then; her only other recourse was to cry and plead with him, as she was close to doing earlier at the first sight of his scars.

 _You lied about Felicity_ , she could have said. _Tell me why you were behaving oddly all evening_ , she should have asked. Or perhaps, more simply and inclusively: _Ollie, what are you not telling me? Why?_

But he did not let her decide if she wanted to risk his telling another blatant lie to her face. Approximately two seconds passed before he concluded curtly, “At this time of the night, you belong in your room. Let me walk you back.”

“There is no need,” Thea snapped, as haughtily as she could. She hated that the more affected her air was, the more she sounded like a petulant child, for whatever sophistication and worldliness she could emulate paled in the face of the cruelty he must have experienced firsthand. With what little dignity she had left, she pronounced, “I know the way.”

Closing his door before he could say a word, she started for the stairwell, not to return, but to descend towards the ground floor in a tottering haste not tempered by any rationality. Predictably, the man that Oliver had become did not follow, unlike the conscientious older brother from five years ago, and she kept her staggering pace, her only thought a desire to eviscerate the feelings churning through her.

The night air was clammy against the heat of humiliation on her face as she half-stumbled, half-dashed the short route to the outbuildings behind the main house, all recklessness.

This time she did not fling open the door to her intended destination, but entered the stables quietly, heading straight for the stall that had been appointed as makeshift living quarters ever since the Duchess of Starling had hired an extra stable boy though the duchy was not in need of an extra groom and the grooms’ quarters in the outbuildings were full two years ago. She slipped into the darkened space, the smell of hay enveloping her, and she reached forward to grasp nothingness where she once imagined the warmth of a companion, ever since she had insisted on a tour of this particular stall.

_Of course Roy wasn’t here._

On the heels of disappointment came her senses, and she let out a small bark of harsh laughter from where she was kneeling on the lumpy pallet he called a bed. What was she expecting, even if Roy Harper was here? It was the middle of the night, and her actions would have gotten both of them into trouble all for nothing. It was not as if a stablehand who had been born on the streets truly cared about the odd lady of the house that insisted he listen to her inanity every time they met. What were her struggles to him, even though she was truly hurting deeply underneath the fine clothes she wore?

 _But at least Roy would listen_.

The coarse fabric covering the pallet was fisted tightly in her shaking hands before she broke, and began to blubber. She cried not the delicate tears of a wronged maiden but large, salty drops that spilled past the rim of her undoubtedly reddened eyes, every sound that escaped her open mouth an ugly sob rather than an intelligible articulation of all that she had been suppressing about the horrid, horrid evening that she was having. As her exhaustion took over, she buried her face into the familiar smell of earth and hay lining the bedding, into the familiar smell of the man that it belonged to. She had no profundity or eloquence to conclude the night, only the distinct knowledge that she should derive no comfort from the residual remnants of Roy Harper’s presence, not when the honest truth was that she was alone in the confines of her world.

 

* * *

 

The look on Bartholomew Henry Allen, Esquire’s face as he awoke to the barrel of a gun pressed against his neck was one that really belonged to the caricatures of George Cruikshank, rather than the mottled sunlight streaming through the exposed rafters above.

Roy leaned his weight into the pistol he brandished to ensure that the older man was truly awake, a knee on the edge of the bed and his free hand pinning Mr Allen’s shoulder down. He did not begrudge the man his grogginess, Roy himself had slept poorly due to an incessant strangeness in the left of his ribs all night, as if his heart had cause to feel another unidentified person’s pain. He did not, however, have the time to wait for the question that was forming rather slowly on the older man’s lips to be pronounced before he made his own demand. “We’re not headed for Ely. Where are you taking me?”

A sheepish look crossed Mr Allen’s face at his being found out. “I guess I shouldn’t have tried to bamboozle the Duke of Starling’s man… You don’t suppose you could let me sit up before I make any explanations, could you?”

Roy pressed his pistol to the man’s throat, at the spot where his pulse beat the strongest. “I grew up on the streets, Mr Allen. I don’t fool easily.”

“No, I imagine not,” conceded the man, and he relaxed, evidently resigning himself to explaining the switch in routes whilst lying in his bedclothes in the room he had hired for the night. “We’re not headed for Ely, because we’re not going to Ely.”

Roy frowned in annoyance at the roundabout reply. “His grace told me -”

“The duke told you what I told him. We’re headed for Kent, and we would be sooner on our way, if you could be persuaded to putting your pistol away.”

Having obtained his reply, Roy did as asked, tucking the weapon back into its holster. Allen let out a whistle at the efficiency with which Roy had acted, his sharp eyes indicating that he did not miss any of the younger man’s motions despite the speed with which he had acted. Then the baron’s son got up and began dressing in a haphazard order, whipping out a watch in the midst of his fumbling with his clothes and murmuring a faint sound of disappointment at the late hour of the day.

“Why are we going to Kent?” Roy finally asked, folding his arms across his chest. He had not expected this of Allen, and had been rather shocked to discover where they were last night, when they had stopped riding for rest at the coaching inn they were presently standing in.

“Because all our leads in London have gone dry, with the duke’s ruling out of Deathstroke as the culprit, and there is something in Kent that I need to check.” Allen’s brow furrowed as he inspected the knot he had tied, before he undid it to begin again. “It’s related to Felicity’s disappearance, don’t you worry.”

Roy’s fingers had curled over the pistol unconsciously, but he forced himself to bite back his annoyance and said, as courteously as he could, “Mr Allen, his grace sent me with you to expedite the report of your findings in Ely. I fail to see why a detour to Kent will serve this purpose.”

“You’ve be quite surprised by how fast I can act, when the occasion calls for it, Harper,” said the older man, who seemed to have given up on righting his cravat. “Also, please address me as ‘Barry’.”

“‘Barry’,” pronounced Roy with exaggerated flourish in his imitation of the Quality’s rounded tone. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Kindly explain our present route.”

Barry Allen let out a snort of laughter. “You’re almost as good at impressions as Cisco is. Very well, the Duke of Starling has not been entirely honest with me, which is why I did not see a need to alert his grace to the true nature of my travels. You are at liberty to return to London with that, go to Ely on your own, or you can come with me to Kent and report on what I find.”

“What are we looking for? And what is his grace not telling you?”

“The duke asked his mother about a man named ‘Leander Cooper Seldon’ when I was in Starling House. When I asked his grace the provenance of his knowledge of Cooper, he wouldn’t say.”

Roy frowned. “Surely his grace has the right to keep his own counsel.”

Barry cocked his head then, suddenly eyeing Roy with curiosity. “Accent aside, you don’t speak like a stablehand…” he murmured, before continuing the line of conversation they were on. “The Duke of Starling certainly has the right to his own counsel, but not when information is pertinent to a proposed joint venture. If he wants my cooperation in this investigation, he will have to deal honestly with me. Until then, I will inform his grace only of my findings, and not my plans or conjectures.”

Pulling on his boots, Barry Allen headed for the doorway, his hat in his hand. “Well then, Mr Harper. Shall we be going?”

Barry had brought his own horse for the journey, and the duke had loaned Roy one of his geldings. Roy ran a hand down his steed’s flank whilst the other man mounted, additional supplies for the lengthy journey in hand.

“Who is ‘Leander Cooper Seldon’?” asked Roy, this time in the accent that he was accustomed to using in his position at Starling House. It clearly had not escaped Barry that he had a talent for mimicry, and he no longer saw a need to pretend to the dimwitted errand-boy persona he had taken on in the first leg of the journey.

Having stuffed a pastry in his mouth to free his hands, Barry adjusted his seat before replying. “Cooper was the only son of a country squire. His father was of the Seldons from Kent, and his mother the daughter of a blacksmith that became a rather wealthy banker.”

“Why do you say he ‘was’ the son of a country squire?” asked Roy.

Barry hesitated, nudging his horse forward into a canter. “Because he died. Three years ago, there was a scandal that was only hushed up because word was put out that the Seldon boy was ill and had to be sent to Rome for recuperation. We – by that I mean the people who knew Cooper and the family – then learnt that he had perished there, and his father too grieved to return to England with the remains.”

“And this Cooper person knew Felicity whilst he was alive?”

“Cooper knew Felicity, from our time in Cambridge. He was…important to her. I didn’t see a need to retread the sordid tale until the duke mentioned his name, but it occurred to me that Slade Wilson aside, there is one other source of trouble in her past. The Seldons do not hold her in very high estimation, not after what happened, though I never imagined that any of them would resort to kidnapping a woman after all these years.”

“You don’t have to beat about the bush, you know,” said Roy. “I grew up on the streets in London and have seen plenty. What was the nature of Felicity and this Cooper person’s relationship? What was the scandal that passed?”

"Even if I knew the answer to your first question, I would not be at liberty to divulge details. Suffice to say I do believe Felicity loved him, though there was never talk of an engagement, and she was not accustomed to sharing such details with me. What I do know, is that Cooper and Felicity began their acquaintance following a battle of wits in a discussion of mathematical theorems in Cambridge…they shared many an interest.

“As to the second, in 1809 a Felix Fletcher was charged with three counts of forgery in the assizes, only to have the charges dropped when the son of a wealthy country squire admitted to the crimes in the presence of the magistrate. You’ve no doubt guessed that Mr Fletcher was Felicity Smoak’s pseudonym, but it should be evident now that the man who went to die for her was Cooper. The Seldons being who they were, arranged for Cooper to be sent down to the Continent instead to the gallows, on the pretext that he was, indeed, ill.”

 _He must have loved her_ , thought Roy. Having come close to the gallows himself he knew with certainty that there were very few people he was willing to brave death for. Barry was nudging his horse into a gallop, and Roy followed quickly, shouting his question over the roar of the wind in his ears.

“So we’ll be looking for Leander Seldon’s family in Kent?”

Barry turned and slowed his horse so he could properly answer Roy’s question. “No, Cooper’s parents have passed away and Seldon Hall is now in the hands of a cousin, but I have just recalled Cooper’s last letter to me, after he left for Rome. He wrote that he had sold his soul for Felicity, and that he would return for her.”

Roy nearly halted his horse in the abrupt way he had reared back at Barry’s pronouncement. “You’re heading to Kent by virtue of a dead man’s last words?”

A grim smile touched Barry’s lips, before he replied. “That’s the thing – it occurred to me that I never once saw the body. And in my line of work, you always, always inspect the body.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At time of writing this, I have not seen the midseason finale, and so I apologise if you needed something a little more encouraging in the wake of the carnage that undoubtedly occurred. I have been unable to update because I am very busy with my work and two weeks ago I finally admitted that this balancing two vocations wasn't working very well for me. As recent commentators have pointed out, there's been a drop in the quality of my writing in the past few chapters, something that I'm sure you have noticed and something that I am all too aware of. I can either be good at my work or be good at writing. Unfortunately I am going to have to focus on my career. What this means is that I will only be able to really work on this story when I'm on holiday (which happens around every 2 months), this chapter being a prime example, since it was mostly completed when I was in Reykjavik. I offer no promises but I will be in Vienna and Prague in January, and should be able to squeeze in some writing there if I can finish the work I need to do. What I have done is plan the next two chapters out so I just need to work on the research, writing and rewriting (which typically takes about 5 days per chapter if I have nothing else to distract me). Thank you for being patient and honest with me about what you liked and did not like thus far - I dearly love all the feedback and support you've given!
> 
> I struggled very hard with what to show in this chapter, and previous plans included a legal dispute over a settlement trust (really), quite a fair bit of narrating and bad people doing bad things, a spy subplot and scathing commentary on the plight of women in 19th century England. What I really wanted was to update you on Tommy and Laurel, but in the end even the short section on Laurel ruminating had to go, because it did not fit tonally with what I needed to cover in the plot in this chapter. So if you've read this author's note to here, firstly I congratulate you on making it through the end of part one of this arc, and we will have a time skip at last in the next chapter as I continue to tackle the Hyde Park murders (bet you've forgotten about them by now), the Merlance love story, the disappearance of Felicity Smoak, and Moira's fears. And somehow tie them all to Robert Queene's murder. We can do this.
> 
> Onto the notes. When I edited Thea's section I had just read Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, which is a fantastic book, and might account for the sensory overload. Thea has always struck me as something of a wild card, which is why I try to use her point of view sparingly but I thought it necessary to address why someone as perceptive as she did not realise what had happened to Felicity. The answer is, rather unfortunately, that Starling House is rather large. Felicity was lying about Donna - remember that she arranged for Slade to find a body in order to protect her mother. But Oliver was lying as well, of course. I rewatched the scene in Season One where Thea sees Oliver's scars several times to write this, and while I chose to do it differently, I found Stephen Amell's portrayal of severe PTSD!Oliver fairly instructive for future scenes. For those who are curious, Thea does not get discovered in the stables in the morning and is then forced to marry. Forced marriages are a lovely romance trope but I do intend to keep tropes to the minimum unless it services the plot. Roy and Thea do not get a happily ever after so easily!
> 
> When I wrote the Roy part I thought I was giving you the Barry/Roy combo no one asked for, but I do think there's a lot of potential as they look for the truth of Cooper's return. At first the story of Felicity's past with Cooper was going to be from her POV but it read very clunkily and I rather prefer this, which allows me to explain why Roy develops investigational skills - he learns from Barry! Oliver doesn't tell Barry about Cooper because Slade told him that Cooper was Felicity's lover, and Oliver wishes to protect Felicity's reputation. He is a bit of a caveman, but it all stems from his overprotective tendencies.
> 
> If I don't update before Christmas, I wish you all a very happy belated Hanukkah and a very Merry Christmas!


	31. Temptation

_25 th May 1812_

_Ladies of the ton, this authoress regrets that she cannot tell you whether to laugh with joy or cry with despair at the state of your collective prospects. This is most remiss of her – surely a gossip rag must be good for something of practical value beyond its vocational impetus of spreading rumours. Alas, the state of the marriage mart is uncertain, incalculable and consequently, this column must today, look away from the lofty goal of offering advice, and settle firmly upon the more achievable aim of reporting recent events._

_The Duke of S_______ has been acting strangely. At every social event he has accompanied his mother and sister to, His Grace has been surly and uncommunicative. It is said that the duke was seated at a number of balls this week for ten minutes together without opening his lips, and when he did speak, it seemed the effect of necessity rather than of choice – a sacrifice to propriety, not a pleasure to himself. His Grace seldom appeared really animated._ _This authoress knows not what to make of it, except to venture the wild guess that the duke may have lost his heart along with his tongue, though the identity of such a woman remains a mystery._

_The Merry M_______, on the other hand, has spent the week plastered to Lady H_______’s side when not in the company of his brethren. This authoress predicts an offer by the end of the Season, and points out the conspicuous absence of Miss L_______ L______ in society all week barring us from knowing whether she approves or not of the match. What must surely be awkward is the close friendship between Lady H_______ and Lady C________, in light of the traditional partnership of the M_______ earldom and L______ viscountcy with the S________ duchy. Will the Punch-Tossing Incident break up a friendship, or a partnership forged through centuries? The jury is still out._

_Last but not least, Lord C_____ has been seen calling upon Lady T____ Q_______. This portends yet another most eligible bachelor rendering himself unavailable on the marriage mart. Dear reader, are we to laud the potency of love in spring or mourn the loss of many a woman’s chance to marry well? This authoress cannot tell._

 

“I will never understand your insistence on reading gossip rags,” said Caitlin Snow, pulling her shawl tighter about her to preserve warmth in the chilly air of the night.

The corner of Barry’s lips raised as he folded the scandal sheet he had bade her bring from London into a neat square and placed it into his pocket. “Only one particular gossip rag.”

There was bound to be some story behind the exchange that Roy was not interested in prying into. He cleared his throat, drawing their attention, before he gestured at the solemn gravestones of the churchyard they were standing in.

“Dawn is coming,” said Roy. “We should hurry.”

Miss Snow nodded, and the resurrection men she had engaged in Kent brandished their shovels at once. While the hem of her skirts was trailing in the dirt, her appearance was otherwise that of any country gentlewoman out for a jaunt in English countryside.

Through the undulating rows of grey steles the company went, the crackle of a breaking twig under someone’s weight interrupting their silent trek every now and then. With every step Roy tried to stem the disquiet he privately felt at their surroundings and proposed course of action. He knew was courting bad fortune to disturb the rest of the dead, even if the rest of these science-spouting _gadjos_ did not seem to think so.

They stopped at a moss-covered gravestone Barry had pointed out two days ago, the flowers they had left as part of their cover already wilting where it lay amongst the winding weeds accrued through time. Bringing the lantern he bore closer to the inscription, Roy squinted as he laboured in making out its well-weathered words under scant light.

“Leander Cooper Seldon, Loving and Dutiful Son, Gone but Not Forgotten in the Year of Our Lord 1809,” read Miss Snow. “Barry, this is no fresh grave, easily returned to a deceptively pristine state once I’m done. Are you sure about this?”

Barry turned to exchange glances with Roy. Over the past few days they had tried to visit Seldon Hall, only to be repeatedly turned away by the butler on account of its master being away on business. In their spare hours Roy had interviewed a number of the local villagers, whilst Barry busied himself with examining the locations where Felicity was said to have visited when she briefly sojourned there in the winter of 1809, when the news of Cooper’s death came.

“Well, I have looked over the site, and I don’t see anything that requires special examination before we proceed to excavation. Have you any objections?” asked Barry Allen solicitously.

It was difficult for Roy to wrap his mind around the idea that there was yet another man like the Duke of Starling: wellborn, and yet not dismissive of those with a lower social rank; moreover, possessed of skills not typically found amongst his titled and landed brethren. It was even more difficult for Roy to fully comprehend Barry Allen’s sunny disposition despite the tragedies in his family history.

Heir to a barony or not, was not a man whose father had been accused of madness and murder, whose mother was said to have been murdered by her own husband, supposed to be as secretive and mercurial as the present Duke of Starling?

Perhaps it was because Barry Allen did not grow up in the grit and gloom of London as the Duke of Starling and Roy himself had.

Roy gave a careless shrug. “Your powers of observation far exceed mine.”

His brow knitting with concentration, Barry cocked his head as he gave Roy’s appearance a casual perusal. “Said powers of observation currently tell me that you are uncomfortable with what Caitlin is about to do. Care to share why?”

Roy rubbed the tip of his nose with the back of his hand. He knew it was necessary to ascertain if Leander Cooper Seldon had perished at all, for every interview that he had conducted over the past few days raised questions: closed casket funeral, the sole witness to the death never returning to England and numerous accounts that the man that went by ‘Cooper’ had in fact, been in good health just before he left for the Continent.

Yet the Rom in him remained uneasy about the whole business. Roy closed his eyes and resigned himself to the disinterment – it was, after all, what the Duke of Starling would want him to do. What the duke himself would do.

“Always, always inspect the body,” he replied, echoing the words that Barry himself had said just a few days ago, stepping aside to allow the resurrection men to take their positions around the grave

The earth covering the coffin was parted, Roy eventually persuading himself to join Barry’s keen monitoring of the disinterring from where he was crouched by the gravestone. Having spent some time in Barry’s company over the past few days gave him an idea of what the baron’s son looked out for every time he took apart a scene – in this case the quality of the soil, the state of the overgrowth, the exact dimensions of the way the grave had been dug – and Roy too admitted that everything seemed as it should on the surface of this grave.

A trough-like space was opened next to the exposed coffin; once the digging stopped, the older man launched himself into the open grave with little hesitation and little grace, having to steady his landing by laying a hand onto the top of the coffin.

As Barry raised his arms to help Miss Snow down, Roy forced himself to bite back his second and third thoughts about it all and join them by the coffin. He landed neatly on his feet, just in time to witness Barry extricating a knife from his a flap in his boot and stick it under the coffin’s lid.

“Knot-free elm,” remarked Barry as he patted the coffin lid, his lips pursing to show his approval. “Depositum made of brass, as are the handles.”

Miss Snow brushed the soil off the top of the coffin with a gloved hand to reveal a brass plate engraved with ‘L.C.S.’, ‘December 1809’ and a motif of an angel and flowers. “The depositum matches the gravestone.”

They both turned to look at Roy.

“Brace yourself, Mr Harper,” said Miss Snow, not unkindly.

“I hope you are prepared to view and smell approximately two and a half years’ of rotting flesh,” Barry said at the same time.

Steadily, deliberately, Barry ran his knife around the edge of the coffin lid, whilst Roy waited in anticipation for Miss Snow and Barry to pry it open, expecting a cloud of dust to erupt with the opening of the coffin. It was done, with little fanfare of the supernatural kind, not even the sudden howl of the wind to ring in his ears at the violation that had just occurred.

Taking a step forward, Roy cautiously peered over the edge of the open coffin, a hand half-raised in the event he needed to cover his nose to obscure the stench. As it turned out, their warnings and his precaution had been in vain.

There was no body.

 

* * *

 

Four days had not been enough to properly ruminate on the revelation that he was not dead.

 _How?_ she asked, a thousand questions about the orchestration of his false death appearing in her mind. _Why?_ was her second port of call, accompanied by the thousand and one corollary questions about his reasons for doing so without informing her, and then waiting until now to contact her.

The one thought she had not allowed herself to dwell upon, ever since she was unceremoniously marched to this room with the close of Cooper’s declaration of friendship with Slade, was the dangerously seductive _He’s come back for me_.

To think _He’s come back for me_ was to be a child again, to believe in foolish, ridiculous notions, much like the church’s insistence that a heliocentric world was wrong, proof notwithstanding.

Felicity Smoak was a grown woman capable of accessing empirical truths. She was no longer the little girl who believed her papa would return to resume their favourite game, even after a whole month had passed since the landlord had turned them out.

That little girl had clung onto false hope and stowed away every groat, crown and farthing she could get her hands on, with the intention to return to their house where papa would certainly be waiting. Papa would swing her into his arms, and then she would be his bespectacled princess again, and he would be the prince come to slay the dragon for her in their special game.

So that little girl ran away, from the bawdy house that she hated so, from Donna, because mama said that they had to stay at the bawdy house and that papa was never coming back. That little girl hailed a hack and took it all the way to Wells Street, her favourite book clutched in her hand for company, until the hack stopped, and she rose to see out of the grimy window clearly. There papa was, speaking to a gentleman she had never seen before, but standing just outside the house as she always believed he would be. Swift was the speed at which she pulled at the door, the childish stubbiness of her little legs the only impediment to her long-awaited reunion with her papa.

And then she heard the other gentleman conversing with her papa by the front door congratulate him heartily on his marriage to a great lady, and on becoming stepfather to a most darling little girl.

Pain was presently darting through the nerves in her hands. Felicity flicked a glance downward and found that her hands were drawn into a tight clasp, her knuckles white and her greenish-blue veins showing up in sharp relief against the pallid backs of her palms. Her turmoil must have materialised on her face, for the man that served as her captor’s sentinel in respect of her for the past four days took a threatening step forwards, his shadow looming onto her comparatively smaller frame as if to underscore how easily he could overwhelm and hurt her.

 _Father_ , Felicity corrected, forcing a weak smile at the hulking creature as she unclenched her hands and laid them on the writing desk in the room, onto the books and maps strewn haphazardly about its surface. _Never papa_.

Her guard was satisfied by her apparent return to normalcy, if the placid inactivity she had been affecting over the past few days whilst trapped in this room with his laconic company could be described as normal. There were writing instruments on the desk, even a letter opener – a sharp, nasty thing that looked rather out of use for the rust gathering on its surface – but in the interests of freedom she had spent her time tracing the contours and shadows of the room with her mind instead.

The room’s proportions suggested that it was on the ground floor, and though she was not allowed near any windows, the sounds that did enter suggested they were someplace rural, far away from the bustle of city streets.

There was a possibility that she was wrong - Felicity was well aware that she was no Barry, and she did not flatter herself to presume that her powers of observation were quite as astute as that of her friend. But though her talents were of a different variety, these present travails of her mind were driven by fear, inactivity, and her long abiding hatred of mysteries. There was much she did not understand about her present circumstances.

Felicity heard the screech of an unoiled hinge and the accompanying slam of a nearby door, before the door to her prison was flung open with a sudden burst to make way for the entrance of her captor. Slade strode in confidently and unaccompanied, his cane tucked under his arm. Felicity felt and saw his gaze fall upon her presence by the desk with approval. “Good evening, Felicity. We’ve been most neglectful hosts, Cooper and I, but I trust you found Mr Gold’s company adequate?”

She glared her response to him, “I’m afraid I can’t make any definite pronouncements, lacking a point of comparison. Perhaps you would release me, so I may better answer your question.”

Slade threw his head back to laugh heartily, before addressing her guard. “Cyrus, you may leave us for now.”

With a grunt to acknowledge his master’s command, Cyrus Gold shuffled out obligingly, leaving Felicity alone with her captor. The door shut with a heavy slam that rang in the air, an ominous note to underscore Slade’s drawing closer.

“I see you have not busied yourself productively since our last meeting,” said Slade, casting his eye onto the blank notepaper on the desk and removing his gloves.

Echoes of the way he prowled towards her in the Starling library before tossing her against the bookcases came to mind, and Felicity hid a shudder as best as she could, as she did the throb of the still-healing wound on her temple.

“Shame,” Slade continued, and he must have realised the source of her discomfort, for his single eye glinted with something much like humour. “Here I was expecting a rudimentary draft for my code, were you as wise as you are intelligent. Or perhaps a suicide note, if you were minded to be dramatic.”

“There is nothing that will compel me to write this code for you, Slade,” she declared, eyes blazing with what defiance and anger she allowed herself to feel at being forcibly brought here. “Return the papers you took from me in Starling House – I will not lift a finger for you.”

The corner of his mouth lifted, and she watched him skirt round the desk to plop himself into the chair behind it. Slade silently assumed a languorous position as he propped his cane to the side of a chair-leg and crossed his booted legs, his fingers steepled where they rested above his chest.

“Would I be misinformed,” he finally said, when he had taken the position of comfort he desired, “in my understanding that you desire to leave this lovely farmhouse?”

Her mouth fell open in exasperation. “Have I not been clear enough that I wish to be released?”

“Released? And spoil Cooper’s surprise? Felicity, what sort of friend do you suppose I am?”

He was enjoying this; the raised brows and expressive moue of shock he made belonged to the deft strokes of a caricature than their present conversation.

“So you are friends,” she echoed, ignoring the flare of dismay she felt in the face of this confirmation. She had not wanted to believe Cooper’s declaration of friendship with this mercenary who had hounded her skills across England.

“Naturally. It is entirely my good fortune to be so acquainted with a fine gentleman like Cooper Seldon, would you not agree? Or have you forgotten his virtues entirely since you met the dashing Duke of Starling?”

She coloured involuntarily. “Leave the duke out of this. And Cooper as well. Whatever your hold is over him, the matter is entirely between you and me, Slade.”

Slade reached downwards for his cane then, and gave its handle a sharp twist. She could not help wincing as the needlelike blade concealed by the mahogany body of the cane emerged.

“Well, I suppose that is one way to skin the cat,” he acknowledged, picking up an stone Felicity had always supposed to be a mere paperweight from the desk and beginning to whet his rapier with it. “I _have_ been eying your talent for some time, far longer than you know. Do you remember Mr Derenick? What of Mr Brodeur? Hogue? Green?”

That was a chronological list of the larger commissions she had acceded to over the past two years, and Slade looked up briefly to note the flicker of recognition in her eyes, without once pausing his rhythm whilst sharpening his blade.

“Every one of them an agent of mine, Felicity. I sought to test your competence, after you so easily cracked the code that I bought from the Davenport brothers in the spring of 1810. You never disappointed. Everything I threw at you, you deciphered or outdid with your intellect, not even after I enlisted Cooper’s help.

“When you broke the result of all his months of labour within a week, I knew then that I had to have you. After all, wars are fought with more than the courage of men, the weaponry and the tactics of leaders alone, but on the basis of information, and what better way to cloak one’s plans than with a cipher? But you reneged on the contract, and I was forced find you in Ely. And then you ran from my house, put me to all this trouble, just find you.”

He paused there, and she slowed the seemingly casual placement of her hands onto the desk that she had been engaged in while he was speaking. He did not seem to notice the way she laid her fingertips on the edge of the table; his attention appeared to be consumed by the examination of his handiwork.

“H-how did you meet Cooper?” Felicity asked, keen to keep him engaged in conversation.

“In Rome. Right after Oliver and I parted, come to think of it now. I made Cooper a trade, and he’s delivered on his end most superbly in divulging your residence in Ely and outlining your weaknesses so I might engage you.”

At that last reference to her, Slade looked up and gave her his full regard, his whetting slowing slightly.

She could not help the hand that she raised to her mouth, or the wash of terror over her person. Following the charges against Felix Fletcher in 1809, she had always been careful to limit the information about herself in her work, but Cooper knew her.

_He might have enabled Slade from the outset to circumvent her every precaution._

“You appear surprised. Did you never wonder how it was I knew where to find you in Ely? Or how to trap dear Donna? In any case, that brings us back to what you said earlier…something to the effect that nothing would compel you to write me a code.

“To be more specific I’m sure you mean that I hold nothing over you. That optimistic assertion is not entirely unfounded, of course. I may have taken your precious papers to force you out of Starling House, but it’s not like I can destroy them without removing what leverage I have over you.

“Donna – lovely woman, your mother – is out of my reach, in light of that mangled body we discovered by the side of the road after you set my house aflame. Though to be frank, your longstanding association with Killer Frost inclines me to believe that the body we found was merely a decoy. In any case, I certainly have no intention to court direct warfare with the Birds of Prey again, following Cain’s attempt at laying siege on Canary Court.

“That brings us to the matter of harming your person. I daresay you could write very well with both your legs incapacitated, but I’m not inclined to prefer physical torture where persuasion through the offer of incentives tends to achieve outcomes more effectively.”

Her blood had run cold in the course of his speech; it was all she could do to keep her mind focused on his words as opposed to the roaring of her panicked heartbeat in her ears.

“You have no options, Slade,” she ground out, a frantic insistence on a state of affairs she desperately needed to be true. “There is nothing you can offer me but my absolute freedom; either way you do not get your Kingmaker.”

His lips curled upward.

“Tell me, Felicity. Have you been in contact with Mr Bartholomew Henry Allen, Esquire, of late? I believe the man was at Cambridge with Cooper. Have you met Mr Allen’s father? Or the Wests, for that matter?”

“You wouldn’t dare,” she uttered, just remembering to stay exactly where she was instead of recoiling. _Slade knew._ He knew the names of her friends, no doubt from Cooper, who had clearly betrayed her.

“Yes, I would. You threaten mine, and I threaten yours – fairly even trade, wouldn’t you say? But it might not even have to come to that. After all, I do believe targeting Oliver might be a more direct approach with you, after the confiscation of his father’s papers was so very effective five days ago.

“Did you think I would not recognise them, Felicity? You forget I know Oliver much better than you do, though I daresay you must not be blamed for being so enamoured with him – there was once a time when I considered him the brother of my heart. In any case, I have seen him contemplate such papers in Crimea, and while I congratulate him heartily on discovering a code in his father’s papers for you to transcribe, I wonder what would happen if I show them to someone who would be very interested in knowing why the Duke of Starling is involved in such a scheme. Say the man who hired Anthony Ivo to kill his father?”

She would not risk Barry – her faithful, longtime friend – or Oliver, who had shown her every kindness and respect in the short time of their acquaintance. All through the conversation she had hoped that she would not have to resort to her secondary scheme to free herself, but the renewed consternation tearing through her at the clear failure of her first ruse was more than a cue to act. Her hand darted towards the rusty letter-opener she had ensured was just to her right, the crucial instrument required for her to threaten Slade with her own life.

She was not able to reach the stage of her plan where she offered a hasty prayer for the courage to follow her desperate plan through should Slade prove unwilling to release her and the papers.

Felicity let out a sharp cry of pain; acting immediately on the urge to reel backwards, but her wrist was trapped between the object she had reached for and the cold steel of which Slade’s cane was constructed. An angry red gathered at the base of her right hand, pointing to the beginnings of a weal from the impact caused when Slade smacked her with his blade.

She raised her lashes to look him in the eye. This time, his smile was sympathetic, which chilled her far more than if he threw his head back to laugh with manic glee. “Tell me, how many people must die or be ruined before Felicity Smoak is willing to – what was that expression you used? Lift a finger, to write a kingmaker of a code?”

Tears threatened to sting Felicity’s eyes; she tried to pull her hand free again, to no avail.

“Perhaps we should attempt this conversation again, with more options for you to choose from. I’ve always found that hope is a far better incentive than desperation.”

Without easing the pressure he exerted, Slade pulled a crisp sheet of paper out of his breast pocket, and spread it onto the table for her perusal.

“You know what this is, don’t you? I would appreciate it if you don’t tell Cooper how I’ve ruined his surprise. Now, in light of your feelings for Oliver, I’m willing to delay Cooper’s ability to procure this particular document for, say a fortnight. That should give you just about enough time to produce a draft of my Kingmaker, following which I wash my hands entirely of the both of you. I will remove my influence on our dear friend Cooper. What do you say? Surely you will not betray Oliver.”

Disgust and dismay was swirling within her. She opened her mouth to indicate her choice.

 

* * *

 

He awoke at the sound of someone entering, his body entering into a state of lethal alertness that only slightly dissipated at his recognition of the intruder.

“Digg,” said Oliver, a preliminary greeting intended to convey an ease he did not feel.

It was no use, for the back of his throat was raw and his voice a husky rasp rather than a full-bodied sound. He had been shouting in his dreams, in the restless slumber he was not even aware of falling into when he sat himself down before the crystal panes of his observation room at Verdant. His body was covered in a sheen of perspiration –perhaps he had been struggling in his sleep as well. Little remained of his most recent dreams in his current state of mind, a fact for which he was most grateful.

It was better to subsist with palpable reminders of his guilt than live a phantasmagoria forged from memory and fears.

If Diggle had heard Oliver screaming, he did not indicate so. The man closed the door behind him, laying down his dripping umbrella by its frame. His sodden greatcoat and hat joined the umbrella with a prosaic plop, before the man approached the span of viridescent glass by Oliver’s chair, a folded slip of paper in hand.

“Lord Thomas Merlyn was looking for you at the entrance of the club,” said Diggle, pressing the note into Oliver’s hands. “His lordship left this for you.”

Casting a quick glance to no avail for Tommy’s dark hair about the packed gaming room below, Oliver broke the familiar seal on the note and read its contents.

 _I am concerned about you_. _You seem unwell, perhaps even troubled. Pray meet with me soon. In addition, I would appreciate it if you could pay Laurel a visit. She has not been seen in Society since I last spoke to her though it is said her father is better. Please ensure that Laurel is well – I cannot see her myself._

There was no question of his doing Tommy a favour, of course, but the burden of an additional responsibility weighed down on him all the same. He had not seen Laurel since the ball at the Wests’, and their overdue conversation regarding Bristol was still one he would rather not have.

“Have Roy’s contact report to me on her observation of Laurel first thing in the morning,” he said, letting authority enter his voice to persuade himself that the report would suffice for Tommy’s intentions.

Diggle raised a brow. “You’re having Miss Lance followed?”

“And Tommy as well. We don’t know whom it is we are dealing with and how they will choose to strike at me, John. Surely the bosom friend of my childhood and my erstwhile fiancée merit protection as do my family.”

Since Felicity’s abduction last week proved that even the staid confines of Grosvenor Square were insecure, Oliver had Diggle arrange for two more guards to join the household to ensure Moira and Thea’s safety. Moreover, Simon Lacroix’s sudden disappearance from London meant they once again had no live leads, and Oliver wished to be prepared for anything and anyone.

“Surveillance does not always equate to protection,” Diggle pointed out. “In any case, given the absence of a ransom note I’m beginning to think that Felicity was abducted because of who she was rather than as a means of getting to you. It is entirely illogical for anyone targeting you to strike at your secretary first as opposed to your family – your father’s papers are probably just unfortunate collateral in this whole business.”

Oliver privately agreed but he had yet to make his mind up on what he felt about that. He could be glad that she was not implicated on account of him, but the knowledge that she had been taken on account of her abilities only served to escalate his worry for her. It meant that he could do absolutely nothing but continue his desperate, fruitless search for her.

_He had promised to keep her safe._

“I went to the War Office this evening, like we discussed,” Diggle said, a crestfallen sigh punctuating his following words. “There is no information on Felicity. I’m sorry.”

His mouth was twisting with displeasure at the news, yet another disappointment following Anatoli’s similar report that afternoon. Rubbing the slip of paper absently between his fingers, Oliver schooled his expression into something a little less revealing. “And the other matter?”

He was speaking of the files that Diggle had brought back to Starling House last week, which contained information on his father and Simon Lacroix. The revelation that his father had been an agent of the Crown was one that he had never before considered, inasmuch as it accounted for his father’s frequent absences all through his childhood, and provided another explanation as to what Robert had meant in his final words. All this while Oliver had been looking for what it was that he was meant to find in Robert’s work, and for the first time he had some inkling as to what was meant.

The thought occurred to him then – was his father also speaking of his secret work during their last carriage ride, when he referenced specific knowledge and the Starling legacy?

“Digg, how were you recruited into your service to the Crown?” he asked.

John Diggle had been about to report on his findings upon questioning his source on the files again, and he appeared caught out by the sudden change of topics. Blinking, the older man took a second to recover his line of thought before he answered. “Have I not spoken of it before? Through the arrangement of the colonel – I mean General Wellesley; old habits die hard.”

“And your parents, they weren’t…”

“No,” Diggle said, with a shake of his head. “Might you be wondering if your father would have told you of his own accord about his work to recruit you? It is possible – I have a…friend whose father was also involved in the War Office’s work.”

Oliver did not miss the slight pause before Diggle settled upon the appellation of ‘friend’, but he inclined his head in an invitation for him to resume.

“As you know, the files were obtained without the permission of the War Office. They are, in fact, from the private collection of the former War Secretary. Today I paid a call on Sir George Yonge and asked him what your father was last involved in, and if he knew anything of the house in Lacroix-Saint-Owen.”

“Stellmoor,” said Oliver, alluding to the name of the house as reported in the file’. He had checked with his solicitor this past week and found no trace of the property’s existence in the duchy’s holdings. What bore heavily on his mind was the possible connection between Simon Lacroix and his father, and he had asked Diggle to investigate this.

“Precisely. Sir George declined to divulge any information on the mission, but he did say that he believed the house was a private acquisition of your father’s, though he couldn’t be sure.”

“Why not? Would not the War Secretary, of all people, be most intimately acquainted with the details of an operation?”

“…I couldn’t get a straight answer out of Sir George, but my intuition leads me to believe he truly does not know the contents of these missions. There was a mention of your father’s work being beyond the sphere of his authority, and I’m beginning to think that the duke never reported to Sir George at all.”

“If not him, then who?” Oliver expected a response on the intricacies of the civil service.

“His Majesty the King,” came the answer. “It’s possible. The Prince Regent currently takes little interest in the workings of the War Office, but I’ve heard of agents being summoned to report on their findings directly to His Majesty before. If your father received assignments directly from the Crown, then Sir George would, indeed, have no real authority over his grace’s work.”

A ripple of emotion swelled in Oliver’s heart at the suggestion made by his friend. Ever since his boyhood, Robert Queene had been the greatest man he had ever known _._ Oliver had grown up with the conviction that he would never be able to do justice to his father’s legacy, particularly after he watched his father make the ultimate sacrifice to save him, after what he had to do to survive and return to England. And this new information…it merely reinforced the belief that he always held.

Robert Alan Queene, Thirteenth Duke of Starling had indeed been a great man. And Oliver felt more than ever a visceral need to find his father’s murderer and avenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

Rising to his feet, Oliver shoved the note into his coat’s pocket and swept yet another glance at the room below, where members flocked to dispose of their monies at the baize-covered tables. Ever since he had returned to London, every man downstairs was but a moving target, to be carefully observed until he knew where to aim at. Now he was in possession of a possible way of categorising his targets so he could best discern which one deserved to be riddled with arrows.

For his father’s sake he would walk amongst them and laugh with them. He would bury himself in every suffocating layer of society, every constriction of convention, until the time he discovered Robert’s murderer, and he could end it all.

“Then until Roy returns, we will continue on the basis that your conjecture is true.”

“Oliver,” Diggle said gently. “My conjecture brings you nowhere. It is unclear if your father had a partner in his work, and even if you could gain an audience at Windsor Castle, what will you be able to learn? It’s said His Majesty’s last bout of respite from the ravages of madness was a whole year ago…”

“My father’s work might have been conducted in secrecy, by I highly doubt his comings and goings went entirely unnoticed by the _ton_. Marking out his whereabouts might shed some light on what enemies he might have made, particularly when I recall now that Sebastian Blood once mentioned that my father had a reputation for solving problems. I’ll start by asking Earl Merlyn and Walter – could you check if I will be able to meet them at any of the events Thea is going to this week?”

Diggle nodded, and Oliver expected him to leave then, for he was accustomed to patrolling the secret tunnels in Verdant whilst Oliver observed from above whenever they spent their evenings here. But he lingered in his spot by the vast expanse of virescent glass, his hand clearly turning over something he kept in his pocket.

“Is everything all right, John?” asked Oliver. Perhaps confronting Sir George Yonge had caused a personal problem?

Taking a deep breath before he spoke, Diggle drew out a small vial and held it out in an offer. “I think you should have some of this when you return to Starling House tonight.”

Faint hints of a sickeningly sweet odour were key to identifying the vial’s contents.

“No,” Oliver said brusquely, tensing again, this time at the suggestion. “If that is all, you better get to your duties downstairs.”

“Oliver, you haven’t slept a single night since Felicity was abducted from Starling House,” Diggle snapped, before a look of remorse crossed his face at the harsh tone of his remonstration. He swallowed, and continued, far more gently, “You’ve been prowling the rookeries in that green cloak of yours once the house is abed, only returning before daylight. I’m not asking you to tell me what it is that you are struggling with, though I suspect the carriage rides you force yourself on when accompanying Lady Thea to her evening engagements may have something to do with it…I’m only imploring you to rest, for once.”

Oliver knew that glowering at his partner would have no effect whatsoever, for reasons beyond the fact that John Diggle was more physically imposing than he was in both height and bulk. After all, Diggle had the irritatingly honour of being right about Oliver’s condition, based on the little that Oliver had allowed him to see.

_John did not even know the worst of it._

Closing a hand over Diggle’s and the vial, Oliver opened his mouth to repeat his refusal. He would not give a full account of why, under the current circumstances, he could not sleep in a house where his vulnerable family members were mere doors away, why he never allowed himself to spend the night in a woman’s bed ever since his return to society – save for that disorientating, glorious morning when the first pale rays of dawn dappled long blonde hair spread across his pillows. When he woke up to find a peacefully resting woman who was unafraid of him despite seeing firsthand what he was capable of doing in his sleep. When she had spoken not with pity but only acceptance of his brokenness in the first raw instants after she woke him from his nightmares.

 _That_ had been an anomaly, a single flare of bright punctuating the barren bleakness he had grown accustomed to. Following _that_ Oliver had been careful to safeguard his heart from wishing its repetition, because he needed then to protect Felicity from himself.

Just as he needed to protect John now.

So Oliver said the cruel words that he knew would create the distance he needed, as curt as he could manage.

“Don’t speak of things you don’t know about. Return to Starling House if you cannot concentrate on your tasks here.”

Hurt flashed in Diggle’s dark eyes, but he tempered whatever biting reply was on the tip of his tongue and propped the vial onto Oliver’s vacant chair instead. No further words were exchanged; Oliver watched as Diggle left the observation room before he picked the offering up.

With a deft twist of its stopper, Oliver swilled the vial’s contents onto the glassy surface separating the room from the sea of men below. The familiar scent of laudanum – _that sweet temptation to lose all responsibility for restraint!_ – filled the air, and Oliver allowed himself a single moment to inhale the false promise of relief from his sins.

Laudanum would only make him lose his mind and forget what he must do. He made to join the debauchery ensuing downstairs, not allowing himself to dwell upon whether John Diggle would be supporting him in Verdant tonight or if he decided to demonstrate just the amount the sense any reasonable man would and give up on forbearance in respect of Oliver Queene.

In his present state, Oliver Queene was alone, as he needed to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! I was blessed to have the time and inspiration to write this behemoth of a chapter and I'm really glad to share it with you before Christmas as a commemoration of the 6 months we've spent together on this story (in real time, not story time). I really hope you liked Chapter 31!
> 
> I was uneasy about settling on a theme, because the chapter originally centred round admiring an older figure, but I thought that Felicity's relationship with her father does not quite fit into that categorisation. It is also a chapter about the choices one makes in adversity, but that does not make for a single-word title either - why did I ever limit myself to a single word? That leaves us with temptation, which I think does fit even Roy's part, albeit tangentially: Roy chooses to act in a way that he thinks will please Oliver instead of giving into the security of his own fears.
> 
> The scandal sheet portion has a P&P reference though I've always thought Oliver more of a Brontë man than Austen. I managed to slip in a headcanon about who it was writing these things, which also means that one of my favourite characters has been in this story for much longer than you realised, even if she hasn't had any good lines thus far. I tried to be faithful to Season 1 Flash in respect of the first section, though the focus really is Roy. Hope you enjoyed the adaptation of the 'Starling City is gloomy unlike Central City' joke from the Flarrow crossovers. 'Gadjo' is a Romani word that refers to a foreigner and I wanted to hark back to Roy being a POC in the comic books, which is why he's part Rom in this incarnation. For clarification, Roy cannot read quickly. It's remarkable he reads at all, given that the literacy rate was about 62% at this time. It is possible to teach yourself (my own grandmother never went to school or had a tutor but taught herself how to read Chinese to a proficiency such that the Dream of the Red Chamber is her favourite book. Now, I've had lessons all my life and have been speaking Mandarin since I was 2 but I can't even understand Dream of the Red Chamber so I think Roy's semi-literacy in basic gravestone-reading is fairly realistic). When Barry and Caitlin remark on the coffin's make, their conversation is meant to indicate that the coffin itself is of a high quality just short of the frills an aristocratic burial would have, which is in line with Cooper being landed gentry in this story.
> 
> I needed Felicity's section to convey the complicated array of feelings she would have had following Cooper's reveal whilst propelling her arc forward. I hope you thought that I got that balance right; there were a lot of things that did not make it into the final draft, such as a flashback involving Moira, or a sort-of conversation between Felicity and Cyrus where he only grunts in reply. Which was supposed to be why she calls him Mr Grunty in her mind, which is hilarious because Cyrus Gold is Solomon Grundy... I hope this explains Felicity's reaction to the Cinderella reference in Chapter 24 - for feminist cred you'll notice that she has been slaying all her own dragons ever since this childhood trauma. I picked the names from a list of Season 1 characters, barring Caleb Green, who is from Arrow 2.5. I had to dial back on the sassy whilst writing because I wish I was writing Damien rather than Slade. For the geographers amongst you, Felicity is currently in St Albans.
> 
> The Oliver section was originally written from Diggle's perspective, and included comparisons to Andy and Delicity sentiments. Instead you get Broody Manpain, but also implied Olicity and a throwaway reference to where Merlance is at. Enjoy. Diggle referred to a colonel in Chapter 3, that is the current General Wellesley of course, but as he said, old habits die hard; Diggle stopped being his batman when the general held a different rank. 'Foul and most unnatural murder' is from Hamlet, my favourite Shakespearean play, which fills me with glee because I've managed to reference two of my favourite works in this. I thought it important to show Oliver's PTSD as something he tries to control. He steps into carriages although they make him uneasy because it is what a gentleman must travel in, even though his true emotions mark him out as broken, unable to return to society. He never sleeps next to anyone because of his nightmares and how dangerous he is, and he despises himself for it. But he also insists on dealing with the realness of it all, resisting the loss of control partly out of fear he will endanger someone, but because it takes the edge of his effectiveness. Lastly it was important to touch upon his relationship with Robert, and why Oliver needs to solve his father's murder so badly.
> 
> A happy Christmas to all of you again, and I would love to know what your favourite part/line was!


	32. Could

_He ran his hot tongue across the seam of her lips, an invitation, an offer, for more. She felt his hands ghosting over her hips, one settling at her waist and the other reaching upwards to cradle her jaw. A thumb stroked the hair at her temple, an act of tenderness just before he turned his head to kiss her, really kiss her, their tongues tangling together in a dance of mutual will._

_He wasn’t alone in this, this frenzied act of passion they both participated in._

_She traced the muscles of his back with her own fingertips, had her arm wrapped round his broad shoulders as she rose on her toes to close the distance between them._

_Long had she endured the cold flames within her, the ache that she did not know how to fill completely on her own. Now each sensation he elicited in her was kindling, their inferno threatening to eviscerate her existence as they fell together in a conflagration of need and want._

_Her moan of pleasure sounded out as a cry when he lifted his head, his blue eyes soft with affection as he gazed down at her through the dark locks of hair falling over his moist brow._

_“I love you,” Tommy breathed._

Laurel awoke with a start, her back ramrod straight and her breaths shallow. A fistful of sheets was tightly wound in her hand, her mind raced to escape the brand of the images that were the subject matter of her dreams.

Ignoring the unspent desire bottled within her, Laurel snapped to attention and left her bed, barely registering the feel of carpet under her feet as she hurried down the corridor towards the viscountess’s room. She paused at the doorway, lingering there as her eyes made out a figure, stretched out on the bed.

The viscountess rested fitfully, brow furrowed, her mouth drawn into a tight line.

 _But she was safe_ , Laurel thought, and all the reproach she had reserved for herself dissipated somewhat, the guilt that had lodged in her chest the moment she awoke easing. Instinctively she bit her lip as she drifted towards her mother, resisting the urge to smooth over her mother’s forehead with a hand.

By now her eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and she could see clearly the lines that had formed on her mother’s face, the streaks of white that should not have appeared so soon in Lady Dinah’s hair. These were marks of weakness, marks of woe, the ravages of the past five years which could not be effaced by the mere reading of a letter written by the daughter she had lost.

Laurel’s betrayal of her promise of confidentiality to Sara had been the prelude to a cold war between her parents and herself, not the regeneration of health for the Lances. Dinah had clamoured to visit her daughter at once, resulting in a terrifying episode where the viscountess was found perched precariously at the edge of the stairs, face bleached of blood and body covered in cold perspiration, with little to prevent her from tumbling down when her body gave way from exertion.

The diagnosis by every physician as to the viability of such an endeavor was unequivocal: years of failing to eat properly or leave her bed would render a long journey out of London too much of a strain for Lady Lance.

Laurel had to harden her heart as her parents begged her to disclose Sara’s location again then, this time on the pretext of Quentin seeking her out himself and taking her home.

No, she had said, no, no, no. She could not renege on her promises any further, and she had written, had she not, when Quentin first fell ill? Sara must have received the letter by now, Sara did not want to come, and she could write again, but what good would that do when Sara did not want to come?

She stood firm even as Quentin’s dark eyes - at first hot with desperation and hope – cooled to look upon his eldest daughter as a stranger, a traitor.

 _You could save your mother_ , those eyes said, though the viscount’s lips no longer said anything to her, only imbibed more brandy when he was at home and then barked out orders in Bow Street to renew the search for Miss Sara Lance.

Laurel tore her eyes away from her mother’s sleeping form and trudged her way back to her room, her arms folded across her chest as though she were cold all of a sudden.

Her own sheets were rumpled on her bed, the sight of which brought a burn to her cheeks as her most recent transgression scorched through her mind again.

There was a carafe and washbasin by the wall which she could avail herself of, and Laurel submerged her hand into the cool water and touched her fingers to her throat, but she could only think of the way the beginnings of a beard grazed the sensitive skin there in her dreams. The hefty weight of guilt reared its head again.

_Damn him._

Damn Tommy for confessing his love to her, for ruining everything at the time she needed the stability of his friendship most of all. It had been easy to shut her heart and mind to it all whilst she was seised with the crisis that was her relationship with her family, but ever so often her defenses would fall whilst she slept and she would be sorely tempted to use him as such, to lose herself entirely, in a fantasy where she could bury all her pain in the immediacy of a burst of passion.

She knew she had been attracted to him for a while now, latent feelings sharpened once when they were en route to Bristol. His confession broke the seal she had placed over it all, and it was as if her mind took his words as licence to appropriate his distractingly good looks whenever she wanted to forget her burdens, forget that she was Laurel Lance and instead some faceless, nameless entity that could disappear in a burst of heat.

But even in her dreams Tommy ruined everything. In her dreams he always looked at her just before he was about to help her obliterate herself, and said, in that irritatingly familiar voice, “I love you.”

He loved Laurel.

Against all rhyme and reason, he was in love with her.

She did not doubt him; perhaps some small, astute part of her mind had heretofore recognised his truth before he uttered the words that brought the subject of his love up between them. Words that meant everything, and that everything was ruined, because he was Tommy Merlyn and she was Laurel Lance, because she knew he was the best person she had ever known, because he deserved the world, and because she knew without a doubt that she could not give him even all of her—not now, not ever.

Laurel had been in love once: she knew the rush of heady happiness, the warm contentment, the weaving of time and lives together. If Laurel loved, she loved totally and unconditionally, and she lost the capacity or appetite to do so ever again five years ago, when she vowed to never be vulnerable to someone ever again in the wake of her broken engagement.

To love someone who did not return the depths of your affection would be a damnable existence, one that she nearly consigned herself to in respect of Oliver. Tommy deserved so much more, deserved someone who believed that his eyes and smile were what turned the world about its axis, who would share her every thought and feeling with him, who would lose herself in him gladly because he already loved the best version of her.

But Laurel could not. And so she would not.

And so she had to avoid him, because she also did not know how to cleanly break their hearts.

 

* * *

 

By virtue of his station, the gentleman’s gentleman was privy to a host of indiscretions. He was intimately acquainted with his master’s comings and goings; he was responsible for eradicating every streak of dirt and grime, every bloodied tear in the fabric that marred the pristine folds in his master’s clothing. More to the point, it fell to him to ensure that every blemish and imperfection in his master’s appearance was obscured from the eyes of his brethren – all the while never once asking how these irregularities came to be.

And so John Diggle rather thought that he alone saw the most of the Duke of Starling’s current tribulations, and every other person but a glimmer in comparison. As was the habit that both men had fallen into, John entered the duke’s bedchamber at quarter past eight, stopping only once to pick up the duke’s clothes as he walked towards the duke’s dressing-room to throw up the sash and fill it with what little fresh air one could find in London.

Oliver Jonas Queene, Fourteenth Duke of Starling, was a deliberate man. The apparel that his grace donned the previous night was always folded neatly and propped on a side-table by the window, where other gentlemen might simply strew waistcoat and cravat about the floor.

 _He had gotten into a brawl last night_ , thought John, his lips thinning as he ran a thumb over the strained seams of the clothing, the loosened buttons and the grimed swathes where the duke’s body had been scuffed by his surroundings. There was no sign of the duke in his bedchamber, though the crooked rug by the bed suggested that his grace had slept on the floor again, as he had the night before, and before.

He remembered the way he had found Oliver when he last entered the observation chamber in Verdant: tense, ready to attack the slightest threat that presented itself.

John knew _this_ , from his time on the battlefields of Flanders and then Mysore. John knew that men accustomed to war often woke with the blood they had shed still flashing before their eyes, with their own screams still on the tips of their tongues.

What was different about that which afflicted the duke was his stubborn unwillingness to water down the impact of his nightmares despite having returned to England. When John first stepped upon English soil he had taken a whole week to indulge in everything he had not known to cherish in his childhood. Even Andy, who had returned more broken than John was, knew to delight in the inanity of a village fair, or the comfort of a proper bed.

But not Oliver, who bore his fatigue as dark shadows under his piercing eyes.

No, it was almost as if Oliver _wanted_ to feel, to indulge and luxuriate in the pain he had collected from his five years away, and it was _this_ that tore into the recesses of John’s heart.

John had lost his brother because Andy could never escape the darkness he brought with him back to England. He did not want to lose Oliver, even if Oliver was not his to lose.

But he was unsure of what he could do, given Oliver’s particular brand of stubborn mulishness. Perhaps it was better to remember their differences in station for now – there was a reason the average valet did not fret about whether his master would pay heed to his counsel. Having no duke to dress, John gathered up the clothes and headed back towards the servant’s quarters for his sewing kit. At this time of the day there was a higher propensity for quiet on the narrow servants’ stairs, most of the frantic flurry having already passed an hour or so ago when the house had to be made ready for the family.

As he entered through the warren of rooms functioning as storage or offices for the upper servants, it occurred to him that he needed an ally in meeting the Duke of Starling’s mulish disposition. He felt most keenly the loss of Felicity Smoak now. Thoughts of her present fortunes, some more grisly than others, had crossed his mind over the past few days and their powerlessness in discovering what had become of her chafed at his conscience and protective nature.

 _Lyla would have said he had to accustom himself to the existence of circumstances beyond his control_ , John mused, settling in the servants’ hall with the paraphernalia he employed whenever he had to remedy the abuse Oliver did to his clothes. It had always been his custom to work in the servants’ hall just before morning tea whenever he was undercover – the location gave him easy access to gossip and allowed him to observe the comings and goings of the household. He now took his usual position by the head of the table, the large wheel once used by a turnspit dog a few feet away above his right ear. With the same deliberateness that he would show were he handling his pistol, he lay out his needles, thread, breeches ball and soap, allowing the din caused by the scullery maid scuttling about with her brush and pail, or the clang of pots as the cook prepared luncheon in the kitchen to blend into the background before he began to mend loose seams and remove stains.

Two buttons and a torn sleeve in he acknowledged a truth about himself: being unable to do anything did not sit well with him in the slightest.

A little while passed before John was joined by Loring in the same industry, and he shifted his chair with a small screech of its wooden legs against the stone floor, to make room whilst the lady’s maid laid her tools of their trade next to his.

“My, his grace isn’t especially careful, is he?” observed Loring, leaning over so that she could peer at the garment in John’s hands.

John merely gave a polite smile in response and returned his attention to his work.

In the past five days Jean Loring had joined him at the table every single morning once she had dressed the duchess, despite never having done so before. The lady’s maid clearly had an ulterior motive in changing her schedule to match his, and he judged it was a matter of time before she revealed her true purpose in forcing her company upon him – she certainly had not come down to make eyes at him or admire his stitches.

He had given Loring nothing to work with by way of words, but the tenacious woman studied his actions for a spell before she attempted to start a conversation again.

“This isn’t the recipe we use in Queene House, is it?” she said, picking up John’s soap and turning it over in her hands. “Did you learn to make this during the war? I wonder if it can even remove bloodstains.” Her eyes were sharp and shrewd as she awaited his answer. He did not think she was prying for the sake of a tawdry war story, as other servants in his previous households had done.

“No, Miss Loring, I’m afraid it does not,” said John evenly, snipping the thread he used as he finished reinforcing the buttons Oliver had loosened.

“What sort of stains did you often have to remove since you began then?”

John paused his sewing and turned to regard her. “Miss Loring, I do not believe that Emerson would approve of us discussing the affairs of the duke.”

Loring chuckled at his reference to the crusty butler, who had most definite opinions about what was, and was not allowed in respect of behaviour from the household at Queene House. “I’m only trying to be friendly, Mr Diggle. And here I thought we might be kindred spirits because of the work we do.”

“Do you, in the course of your work, remove a lot of bloodstains then?” asked John, before he realised the obvious answer to his question and coloured.

The lady’s maid was truly amused now. “Mr Diggle! Surely discussing _that_ would be inappropriate.”

The sound of a throat being cleared delivered John from the embarrassment of responding. Mrs Raisa stood at the foot of the table, her customarily maternal countenance severe.

“Loring, the duchess needs you,” the housekeeper said, looking at Loring expectantly. Having been summoned by her mistress, the lady’s maid left at once, gathering her things with her with an almost brutal efficiency.

Mrs Raisa did not leave upon the delivery of her message, and instead approached John, the house keys at her waist jangling with every step she took. He raised a brow – was he to be disturbed by every upper servant in Queene House this morning?

“You will do well to be careful about that woman,” uttered Mrs Raisa in a low voice, so the passing footman in the act of transferring a tray of quivering jelly from the kitchen to the storeroom could not hear her. “Loring carries with her not just the stereotypical airs we find in a lady’s maid, but keen eyes and a wagging tongue loyal only to her mistress.”

“Is loyalty not rewarded in this household?” said John carefully, tucking that confirmation of his own instinctual assessment of Loring away in his mind.

“There is only one master of the house,” declared the housekeeper quietly. “And I would be grateful if you could arrange a private meeting with his grace whilst Loring accompanies her grace into town this afternoon.”

Her eyes widened at the close of her words, as if she could scarcely believe what she had just said. John himself was intrigued, for he did not think this was merely a matter of domestic politics that she wished for Oliver to resolve. He nodded slowly, though his expression was a quizzical one, his question to her intentions unutterable for the time being whilst another tray, this time bearing a buttery, sugared pastry with a rich chocolate sauce in a tureen by it, was carted out of the kitchen.

Emerson emerged from the first floor, the stately lines of the butler’s face as stolid as the day John had first been introduced to the household.

“Mr Diggle, it is time for morning tea. Mrs Raisa, kindly summon the housemaids at once. Her grace intends on leaving early for town.”

He then turned into the kitchen, presumably to convey a similar sentiment to Cook.

John began clearing his supplies from the table, folding the clothes carefully to avoid creasing.

“Mr Diggle, you mustn’t forget my request,” Mrs Raisa said, consternation making its way into the edges of her voice.

“What do I tell his grace?” John asked, considering what he knew of Oliver’s schedule for the day and wondering when to fit this in, if at all.

The flood of lower servants into the large hall prevented Mrs Raisa from going into specifics, but she did manage a brief explanation, however hastily and softly uttered.

“It has to do with Miss Smoak’s absence.”

 

* * *

 

 

The rain was falling in smatterings of bloated droplets around his shoulders, and yet Tommy was too flabbergasted to step into the shelter of his carriage.

“Wh-what are you…” he attempted, his eyes shifting from the interior of the vehicle to the empty streets to vindicate his topographical beliefs about his current location.

He was, without a doubt, still standing in the middle of Bond Street, getting soaked to the bone under the unusually torrential downpour of London rain and ruining his Hessians. Just as how the intruder in his waiting carriage was indisputably the Lady Thea Dearden Queene, sister to the fourteenth Duke of Starling.

She wore a hooded cloak that did not appear as though it belonged anywhere in her wardrobe of fine things, and her hands were clasped demurely in her lap, a reticule round her wrist. Her slate-green eyes were drawn to the muddy puddle about his feet,

“All that rain can’t be good for your boots…” she pointed out archly.

“My valet is a wonder at restoring leather,” he replied instinctively, before he came to his senses and entered his carriage. A slight furrow crossed Thea’s brow as the inevitable sprinkle of rainwater dotted the front of her dress and the leather on her seat, but she merely tucked her legs closer to her side of the carriage and waited for him to be securely seated before speaking.

“I need your assistance on a matter this afternoon, and I have already taken the liberty of informing your coachman of my destination. Once my errand is completed, we can pretend that this never happened and part as the amicable childhood friends we are,” Thea declared, with the aristocratic hauteur befitting of the Duchess of Starling’s daughter.

Tommy resisted the urge to pluck at his damp jabot, inhaling sharply as the beginnings of a migraine came on at the prospect of having to deal with this situation delicately arose. He did not need this now, not after he had spent all week lurching between hoping that Laurel would contact him about his confession ( _stupid, reckless thing to do!_ ) and accustoming himself to his fate: a lifetime of subsisting in his overwhelming love for a woman that would never return his feelings whilst playing the Merry Merlyn for the _ton_. He was tired. He was anxious. He did not want to engage in a wild goose chase in a fanciful affair that might turn out to be the stuff of an idle young woman’s overactive imagination.

“Lady Thea,” he said, leaning forward slightly, “I’m afraid I cannot do as you request. Your reputation is threatened – ”

“Stuff and bother,” interrupted the girl. “You are my brother’s bosom companion, are you not? And Queenes and Merlyns have long been allied with each other, so you are practically my brother. Moreover, the very point of my materialising in your carriage unchaperoned is because I need you to accompany me to a place where I wouldn’t ordinarily be allowed access. It would be the height of churlishness to refuse a cry of help from a damsel in her hour of need.”

“Thea, your real brother – my bosom friend, as you so kindly reminded me of, will gladly murder me if he knew that I aided and abetted your attempt at whatever mischief you have planned, so give me one good reason why I shouldn’t march you off to Queene House and deposit you there right now.”

Lady Thea Queene raised a dark brow in an expression that strongly echoed her brother’s own. “Tommy Merlyn, if you insist on returning to Grosvenor Square this instant, I regret to inform you that you must have me forcibly and bodily removed from this carriage when you arrive. I will make a scene. I will accuse you of all matter of unnatural acts and destroy your chances at whatever respectability you’ve been pitifully clutching at ever since your father cut you off.

“Alternatively, you could choose to be the Merry Merlyn and dash off on this grand adventure with me in _loco_ …never mind the Latin. My point is, save your preaching for the ecclesiastical calling that you’ve never been tempted towards, and let’s be on our way, shall we?”

He had forgotten how impertinent she could be, now that she had debuted and on most days presented herself as a self-possessed young woman rather than the badly behaved rapscallion that put Sara Lance’s previous status as ‘annoying little sister’ to shame. By this point he had made his mind up to accede to her request, knowing that she would never let him hear the end of it otherwise, but still he tried to argue, just for the principle of it.

“Are not older brothers equipped with the rights to instruct their wayward siblings?”

“Pot,” replied Thea with no hesitation, “kettle here is not amused at the charge of waywardness.”

Tommy let out a bark of laughter beside himself and gave the ceiling a sharp rap with his knuckles. His carriage rocked into motion, its wheels travelling at a slower pace than usual given the ghastly condition of the weather. “It seems you inherited all the humour in the Queene family. And here I thought wit the exclusive preserve of the Merlyns.”

Thea gave a dramatic sigh, her gloved hand rising halfway to her bosom for added effect. “It would be far too disloyal to clarify that it is in fact a case of dourness being the exclusive preserve of Ollie.”

Tommy’s mirth left as abruptly as it had arrived at the mention of his best friend. “He’s not been well these days,” he said, and a somber mood settled over the interior of his carriage as both parties contemplated the Duke of Starling.

It was closer to the truth to say that Oliver had become mercurial and guarded beyond what was normal, even in public, impatient with societal niceties, gruff when not outright rude, and worst of all, he gave the impression that he was constantly on the lookout for something or someone, as if the social event was in danger of being besieged by dangerous elements at any time.

The expression on Thea’s face was complicated, replete with sentiments he could only guess at. It had long been his impression that Thea Dearden Queene intentionally revealed little beyond the capricious charm she displayed in society, much like the exaggerated Merry Merlyn persona he had cultivated over the years. She seemed to be holding something back now, for a pause passed before she said, “I have my own suspicions on the reason for his recent downturn. That may be an implication of what we are investigating today.”

“And what _are_ we investigating?”

“…you’ll see when we arrive. Tell me about your day in the meantime.”

Tommy tried to stare her into submission, or, more specifically, into revealing their destination, for the haze of grayish buildings they passed were all rendered indistinct by the cover of the rain and told him little of her plans. Little luck – such a stratagem was clearly the sole preserve of the Queenes, and Thea met his gaze with a stony silence of her own.

“I went to pay a call on Lady Harriet, and then had a meeting with my solicitor,” he finally said. “That was before I had to see my tailor and ran into you.”

Thea wrinkled her nose at once.

“You disapprove of the law?”

“Oh, most certainly, should it pose an impediment to my purposes, but my discontent stemmed from a different source,” she replied, twirling the ribbon on her reticule about a finger. “I speak of your courting Lady Harriet.”

“You have already brought up the matter of my finances,” he pointed out defensively. “I, unfortunately, need to eat.”

Thea was unimpressed. “Most charming you are, Merry Merlyn. The stuff of every woman’s dreams.”

“Never say you expect more than a suitable match?” Tommy inquired coldly. “Do you believe that Lord Chase’s recent pursuit is indicative of grand passion?”

“Lord Chase keeps his own counsel on his feelings. But at least I am certain that he is not holding out on another great love of his life, unlike some individuals in this carriage.”

He glared at her then, for her temerity in criticising his choices, for how her words mocked his miserable existence. “I am not discussing this with you, of all people. We’ll speak of the solicitor’s, or the events of your day – for instance, do you know that my solicitor has been embroiled in a resurrection case? Much like Ollie’s, except that this client is gentry, and hails from Kent.”

Thea’s eyes flashed. “You are most certainly not discussing it with me – I see nothing to discuss! You are being a boneheaded fool and if a man showed me even the slightest fraction of love you have given to Laurel, I wouldn’t care about whether he had not a penny to his name, which is not even the case with you – the vast majority of the earldom’s properties are settlements, aren’t they?”

“I long for the day, Thea Queene, where you have to retract that statement about not caring a whit about your husband’s finances. In fact, I’ll bet you for it – twenty pounds you’ll live to regret saying that within a year.”

“You’re extorting pin money from your best friend’s younger sister?”

He grinned, a humourless flash of even white teeth. “You _have_ kindly raised the matter of my present finances earlier in this conversation.”

She let out an incredulous laugh. “Will you not take this seriously?”

“I am being serious. The problem lies not with my prospects but with my desirability to the woman in question.” Tommy acknowledged matter-of-factly, before the reality of it all pierced his heart again, and his voice was almost a whisper as he said, “She doesn’t want me.”

“How would you know? Have you even told her – and I mean properly, not one of your joke proposals on the heels of declaring how you live to make ambitious mamas despair?”

“Yes.” Thea appeared shocked at that. “I told her last Tuesday, and her face turned whiter than a sheet, before she gave me a list of reasons why I was not in love with her. It was humiliating for everyone involved; thank you very much for dredging up these memories and helping me relieve the moment, you mere chit who knows nothing of love.”

She scowled at his insult to her maturity, but refrained from responding in kind. “Have you talked to Laurel since? I have not.”

Tommy threw up his hands. “By all means, point out how she doesn’t even want to talk to me anymore ever since. No, Thea, she has not contacted me at all even though I told her very explicitly that I understand if she doesn’t want to see me, and will wait to be contacted by her.”

Thea grew quiet for a while, before she said, “‘ _To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven._ ’ Ask her again.”

“Where do you get your advice from? Not dreadful novels, I hope,” Tommy drawled, drumming his fingers on the edge of his seat. “The things you hear from the mouth of babes these days…”

“That was the lesson from the book of Ecclesiastes in church yesterday. Perhaps you should attend more often; it might actually do you some good.”

The carriage drew to a stop then, shaking slightly with the descent of his heavyset coachman from his seat. Tommy’s migraine presented itself again as the door swung open to reveal the labyrinthine alleys of St Giles but a stone’s throw away from where his carriage had stopped, the filth of the indigent rookery entering his nostrils as a stench he had not wished to encounter.

His unwanted companion seemed not to mind and alighted from the vehicle then, with the help of his coachman.

“Oblivion Bar is the first door across the street, my lady. As your ladyship said,” said his coachman, and Thea lifted her hem slightly, locking her eyes on the building indicated.

Tommy tore to his feet at once, thrusting an arm in Thea’s path.

“The devil you think I’m walking you in there,” he growled. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Why am I even asking this question – clearly you have, what with appearing in my carriage by yourself in the middle of the pouring rain, much less coercing my company. We are going to Queene House now, and I am going to wash my hands of you.”

“No,” she cried, taking hold of the silver watch on his fob and tugging him towards her. His watch face was turned upwards; she tilted it towards him and tapped it with a gloved thumb. “I have less than half an hour to finish this, before I must return to Madame Devy’s, and appear as though I never left the modiste’s where mother left me. You were not my first choice in this matter, but as it is, I have been under the surveillance of Ollie’s bodyguards all week and I need – yes, I _need_ to speak to a Mr Rook in Oblivion Bar before my half an hour is gone. With or without you, though if you do decide to come I would advise leaving this watch with your coachman.”

She released his watch to punctuate her words, her green eyes blazing with the ire of the righteous.

It appeared he had forgotten how one could never predict whether Lady Thea would actually carry out her threats, and that he should have proceeded with upmost caution right from the beginning. Tommy glowered as best as he could, but he removed his watch and offered his arm to her as they crossed the street together.

The din of raucuous laughter and clinking tankards the moment roared about his ears upon their entering the flash house. A motley assortment of characters populated the oddly named Oblivion Bar, and man and women of all shapes and sizes were engaged in boisterous banter and lively card games in the darkened space of the bar. Tommy nearly had a spasm when a burly man with a hook for a hand came a little too close to Thea for comfort, a chunk of unidentifiable meat on his hook that her curious eyes lingered upon before shse continued towards the bar.

“You’re being too high-strung – even I would want to rob you,” she chided, whilst she beckoned to a barmaid.

“This. Is. A. Flash. House.” Tommy hissed, trying hard not to touch anything, or anyone, for that matter. He heard that Bow Street runners regularly frequented these establishments, as a way of gathering information. He rather hoped there were several present now; he was not confident of being able to defend both Thea and himself should anything happen.

“I know,” said Thea nonchalantly. “Why do you think I thought to come during the day where less people were about?”

He would never understand the workings of her mind – this was infinitely worse than the trip to Bristol, because at least Laurel had allowed him to make some arrangements then. In any case they were soon served, and he did not know what was worse, the sangfroid displayed by Thea at all that was going on about her or the way the barmaid’s very buxom charms were on full display before a lady.

It was probably the lady herself and what she might do that bothered him more.

“My brother and I wish to speak to Mr James Rook,” said Thea calmly, as if Quality entered the likes of this establishment every other afternoon and asked for people in orthoepic elocution. They were made to wait for ‘Jim’ to come, and come he did, a middle-aged man with a most nondescript face, if not for the jutting front teeth that did not flatter his appearance.

“‘ow can oy ‘elp you?” said Jim Rook, perusing the clean appearance and fine clothes that marked them as foreign to the locale.

Thea reached into her reticule and drew out a drawing of a handsome young woman with fair curls and a full mouth, and a pair of spectacles framing her wide eyes. “I’m told that you are the person to speak to, should I wish to locate someone. I bring with me a portrait of Felicity Smoak, and it is imperative that she be found at once.”

“Smoak?” repeated Tommy, recognising the name of Oliver’s secretary.

“Smoak,” said Rook, his mouth pursing. He raised the drawing to his nose to better see it. “Tha’n’ come cheap, if it ‘as anyfin’ tah do wif ‘F. M. Smoak’. The Birds o’ Prey’re lookin’ fer ‘er, and oy ‘ear e’en ‘e Bratva’s lookin’ fer a gel named Smoak.”

“I am willing to part with twenty pounds in total,” Thea offered in a low voice, presumably so as not to startle the public house’s inhabitants at the vast sum she named with aplomb. “I have five in my reticule now to prove that I am good for it. Write to Merlyn House when you have any news and the viscount will settle the rest of the bill.”

Tommy blinked, livid. He could throttle her. In fact, he would do so, happily, right before Oliver murdered him three times over for allowing any of this to happen in the first place.

Jim Rook was apparently not pleased with Thea’s offer, which he expressed by whipping out a knife from behind the bar, crumpling the drawing in his hand. “Oy’ve a better idea. ‘and over your reticule, an’ oy save meself ‘e trouble of goin’ toe-to-toe with Anatoli Knyazev’s forces.”

Tommy looked about in alarm for a runner but no one seemed remotely interested in the literal daylight robbery ensuing, save for a one-eyed man he recognised as Captain Lawton from the Isle of Dogs boxing match he and Hal arranged last week. It did not appear that the captain would assist them, for he remained securely in his seat, casually sipping at his tankard of ale and watching the scene unfold with relish.

“Best give him the bag, Lady Might-be-a-Merlyn,” called Captain Lawton in a sing-song voice when Thea followed the direction of Tommy’s gaze and saw him. “Your footman Harper isn’t here to help you today, and your brother doesn’t look quite as fast as he was.”

“Captain,” Tommy implored. “We could use your kind assistance at this moment.”

Captain Lawton made a face. “How much is your lordship offering? My advice is free, but my fists require considerable more persuasion before they will aid your little sister.”

_He should have screamed and ran for self-preservation the moment he realised she’d hijacked his carriage. And she wasn’t even his sister!_

Sighing inwardly, Tommy raised both hands in the universal sign for placation, scrabbling about in his mind for something that would change the blackguard's mind. “Now, look here, Mr Rook. Do be reasonable; my sister is only trying to help someone…”

Conscious of the possibility of a brawl arising, there were more pairs of eyes trained on them now, some of which were positively unfriendly. From the corner of his eye, he could see Thea surveying the situation, and naturally not a single sign of fear showed on her face.

“Brother,” said Thea decidedly. She pulled her hood up and placed a hand on his forearm. “Mr Rook is quite right. We must compensate the man for his trouble.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She nudged him in the ribs with a sharp elbow. “Shake Mr Rook’s hand – he was most helpful today.”

Not quite understanding, he offered his hand to the lout, who examined it with chary eyes, but did not take it. Unfazed, Thea plopped her reticule on the bar top and allowed the scoundrel to snatch it away.

“Once again, thank you very much for your trouble, Mr Rook,” Thea said loudly, curling a hand round Tommy’s elbow and all but dragging him determinedly towards the exit. Jim Rook had the little bag tucked against his chest, the knife pointed in their direction should they decide not to part with it after all.

“Are you quite sure…” began Tommy, as they passed the threshold of Oblivion Bar.

“When we step onto the street,” interrupted Thea, “run.”

With the first sprinkling of rain about their feet she let go of his hand and tore towards the waiting carriage with a speed and agility he would not have expected of her skirt-clad form. He bounded behind her just as Jim Rook’s cry of outrage sounded from within the bar, followed by accusations that sounded rather like ‘double-crossers’ and ‘bloody liars’.

What looked to be the beginnings of a mob emerged from the exit just as he reached his carriage, which was already hurtling into motion under Thea’s direction that the coachman was to drive at full speed back to Madame Devy’s on Grafton Street at once. Clambering on just before the vehicle turned the corner, he was sprawled out on his seat and short-winded, barely able to summon enough energy to witness her shutting the door tight and settling in her side of the carriage.

“What…you…” spluttered Tommy, at a loss for words, or for anything resembling a decipherable sentiment, really. “What just…”

“There was nothing in that reticule but stones and a rather poorly rendered portrait of Miss Smoak,” she explained breathlessly, loosening her bonnet with shaking fingers. “And we didn’t want to be around when he found out.”

“You _knew_ this would happen?”

Thea was engaged in the process of inspecting her appearance for any traces of her misadventure, meticulously rubbing at the spots of rainwater on her bonnet and sleeves, but she looked injured at his sharp tone. “Of course I did. I planned the whole thing, didn’t I? Well technically Miss West did, since the contact and address was from her, but all the same, I was the one who came up with the false reticule idea – ”

“ _Miss Iris West?_ ”

“Yes, she told me she finagled it from one of the reporters in her father’s newspaper business, and she did warn me that Rook was an unscrupulous sort when I told her I needed information.”

He raised his hands and pressed the heels of his palms into his face then, groaning loudly.

“Are you quite all right?”

“You just took five years off my life to ask questions in a flash house about your brother’s old secretary. _Questions!_ ”

She was beginning to sound cross. “Miss Smoak, Felicity, vanished without word or warning to any of the household, after which a housemaid too mysteriously left. Since then, Ollie insists on having mother and myself guarded by two men that once served in His Majesty’s army, but refuses to answer any of my questions about what happened. I am neither unobservant nor unintelligent, Tommy. _Something_ is manifestly afoot, and I intend to find out what.”

“And so you sought information about Miss Smoak herself,” Tommy said, shaking his head slowly as he pulled himself into a sitting position again. “Because it all began with her disappearance.”

“Precisely. As it is, I am rather pleased with the number of names I acquired from our excursion today. Well done, Merry Merlyn – now all you have to do is pursue the love of your life like I said.”

The carriage wheels drew to a stop again and Lord Thomas Merlyn would be eternally grateful that they were, indeed, on Grafton Street, where Madame Devy’s shop front presented itself most welcomingly after the reception at their last destination.

“Well then,” declared Thea, securing her bonnet and hood and allowing his coachman to help her down into the street. “We must part here. Till next time, Tommy.”

“Most certainly not. There will be no next time. I don’t even understand the first and only time,” Tommy said hotly. With the dissipation of his panic and confusion, his initial anger when they first arrived at the flash house returned, white and hot, at all that had happened. “Never mind what I said about your reputation earlier – do you even conceive of how dangerous your whole scheme was? You were nearly robbed today. What if Rook wanted more than your reticule?”

Lady Thea’s unflappable demeanour melted away then, and she grew pensive, even though he had not expected to elicit remorse.

“It was a calculated risk that I decided I could take,” she said at last, over the torrential downpour. “And so I had to take it.”

His mouth fell open to inquire why, to ascertain her motives for embarking on such a wild scheme, but she answered him before he could ask.

“Miss Smoak was kind to me.”

Lady Thea turned and entered the shop then, leaving him to ponder just how well she knew of love and loneliness, given the wistfulness in the depths of her slate-green eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter (which was supposed to be published a week ago on Galentine's Day, but I wasn't happy with the draft and then I rewrote all of it this weekend) is centred around capacity. Which I thought was a terrible title, so instead you get 'Could'. I upped the rating on this to be careful, and I think I offered that fantasy sequence partly in case people want to stone me for not resolving the Merlance situation after leaving you all hanging for a long time. Sorry. Not sorry - I think Laurel is in the process of getting over Oliver and Sara's purported betrayal even though she now knows the truth of it all. She realised she was still drowning during the Bristol trip, which allowed her to have that conversation with Moira about what she wants. But at the beginning of this story Laurel swore she would not be vulnerable to anyone, which is part of her characterisation as well as a nod to the drawers conversation she had with Oliver in Season One, and I haven't resolved that yet. Laurel is an all-or-nothing type of character, and she's currently still afraid of daring to try, because she knows she will be in too deep before she can stop herself. Now obviously you and I (and Thea, apparently) all know that Tommy is someone she can trust, but she's going to require a few more nudges before she gets there. I sprinkled Lance family drama very liberally during that bit (but I was good and didn't make any regeneration jokes surrounding Dinah given that she's also River Song), and I know a few of you will be outraged at Quentin's callous treatment of Laurel. I rationalised it on the basis that most of the characters on Arrow, Quentin included, are people of action. People of action, to paraphrase Sherry Thomas's description in her fantastic The One in My Heart, are not comfortable with being unable to do anything when the ones they love are broken. It's rather like Oliver not visiting Felicity in the hospital immediately after the shooting and going after Darkh instead in Season Four. To Quentin's mind, Laurel has what is needed to save Dinah, but she's withholding it, even though he's begging her, even though Dinah clearly isn't well. Quentin is too shocked and angry at his own powerlessness to act like the father he should be, but it's got to do in part with him trying to be the best husband he can be to solve Dinah's problem. Laurel's motivation is her promise of confidentiality to Sara, which sounds ridiculous (though thankfully less ridiculous than the baby mama promise, I hope) because obviously their parents already know but she's still waiting for Sara to read that letter and come to Lance House or release her from her promise, except Sara hasn't read it, as we know from the earlier section set in Bath. Damn the logistics of 19th century communication, and it's awful how Laurel is something of a stickler for rules (at least I think she's supposed to be. I can never tell these days).
> 
> Before I begin discussing Diggle's bit, I'd like to say that I think it's possible for Laurel to have a fantasy as such. Obviously she didn't have the internet to point her in directions and well-bred women did not discuss sex as a matter of daily conversation then, but we must remember that this is the Regency and not the Victorian era, which meant naughty Georgians were still alive and probably reminiscing about their romps when they thought the younger set couldn't hear. I'll leave you to decide whether Laurel has had The Talk with her mother in light of her previous engagement, but dreadful novels like The Monk would have given some ideas, and I think we must remember that Laurel is not supposed to be unobservant or stupid, even if she's currently not doing Life very well in the story.
> 
> The servants' hall was inspired by the one I visited in No 1 Royal Crescent, Bath, as well as that of Downton Abbey. (I have a confession: the only character I genuinely cared about on Downton was Lady Mary which is why I didn't have time for anyone unless it was related to Mary, and I never thought I would write a downstairs scene.) Again, because the chapter is centred round what one can do, and the difference between that and what one wants to do, I thought it necessary to flesh out Digg's feelings about the whole business. I particularly love how everyone has basically fallen apart since and he's just going about doing his three jobs of valeting, bodyguarding and even Felicity's secretarial duties, all the while lamenting that he can't do more in his calling as full time babysitter of Oliver Queen. Diggle is a multitasker and overachiever guys, we must show him respect. Jokes aside, the name Emerson came from Walter Emerson in the comic books, who's rather like Walter Steele on the show. He's probably cooler in the comic books, because he has a prosthetic right hand there and here he's just a crusty butler. I've been working towards this scene in respect of Raisa, and I can promise all hell is going to break loose soon.


	33. Realisation

The inanity of his waiting in her drawing room was only surpassed by the moment when he handed to her butler his calling card, so Miss Laurel Lance could be informed that the Duke of Starling had come to call.

Once, he had been able to saunter in with the most perfunctory of announcements, at any hour of the day, and he would have been led straight up to the family quarters where the Lance women greeted him with smiles and sparkling conversation.

Now, the lateness of the hour and the fact that rainwater was dripping from the edges of his coat were cause for the judgmental tinge to the Lance family butler’s expression of greeting. Or perhaps it was the visitor himself that Hilton disapproved of, and the censorious cast of his stony gaze the only way of indicating such when the visitor in question was a peer of the realm.

Oliver had not wanted to come, despite the inevitability of his personal involvement after Sin had informed him that Miss Laurel Lance had not left Berkeley Square for the past five days – he could not very well go to Tommy with no news at all after he had given his word. That reluctance culminated in a series of meaningless diversions all through the day, as he toyed with the possibility of ostensibly futile alternatives and ignored whatever appointments Diggle had scheduled for him. It was only when his sparring opponent at the Fencing Academy executed a manoeuvre known only to a select few in the world, that that he decided his procrastination had reached a zenith in respect of absurdity and it was time to make for Lance House once this encounter was over.

“Nyssa Raatko,” said Oliver then, to the masked individual that had stepped into his practice room and summarily began their swordplay without so much as a greeting or introduction. He took off his fencing mask, so he could speak to her without the metal mesh obscuring his sight.

The woman – he found that it was indeed, as Diggle had once said, relatively easy to miss these things when one expected to see a man – too unmasked herself. Her long dark hair was secured atop her head, and having dropped her mask to the ground, she flashed her characteristic smirk at him. “That’s ‘Nyssa al Ghul’ to you, Al-Sahim. You’ve become slow since I last saw you, in mind as well as in form. I could swear your arm was shaking incessantly all through our fight…”

The last time she had seen him was in Canary Court, three whole years ago, when he had been little more than a husk, more monster than man. Tucking his mask beneath his sword-arm, Oliver ignored her comment about his appearance and continued, “What brings you here? Not enough fools to order about in the Turkish embassy before you go to Bristol?”

The daughter of the Demon’s Head, the vizier in charge of war for the Ottoman Sultan, threw her head back and laughed. “My beloved bade me wait for her in London, and I desired entertainment before she arrives this evening. I thought I’d surprise you when I saw you enter this building.”

“What’s Sara doing in London?”

Nyssa’s striking features contorted into a combination of boredom and distaste. “Something about a missing Bird of Prey, I believe. You know I never take an interest in my beloved’s little hobby – in fact, I resent whatever takes her away from my side for an instant, in as much as I recognise that Taer al Asfar will always long for England, as long as her affairs are unsettled here.”

Oliver could not help the involuntary start he made at her words, or the slight desperation with which he voiced the name he had clung onto with worry all week. “Is it about Felicity Smoak?”

A spark to the choler festering within in him all day, Nyssa al Ghul shrugged carelessly. “I don’t know – I do not recognise the name. Shall we spar again, or do you wish to continue boring me with your conversation, Al-Sahim?”

He gave a curt bow then, returning his blade to its rightful place. “No. I have business elsewhere. Give Sara my regards.”

That had been mere minutes ago, before Oliver braved the baptism of wind and rain with tempestuous stirrings in his heart. His arrival at the Berkeley Square townhouse was first met with a message that neither Lady Lance nor Miss Lance were receiving, the restraint of professionalism preventing Hilton from looking meaningfully at the satin-wood long-case clock within view of the entrance hall for emphasis.

Oliver did not need to follow the butler’s line of sight to know it was clear and plain that the time was quarter past five, and so quarter past any reasonable time for anyone possessing Oliver’s level of acquaintance with the Lances to be calling. Faced with the impediment of good manners and proper etiquette, he was a hair’s breadth close to turning back into the cold embrace of the downpour outside.

He tightened his grip on the brim of his sodden hat. _He had to see her today._

Returning the butler’s stony expression in kind, the Duke of Starling informed the butler he had been sent by Viscount Merlyn with an urgent message for Miss Lance. The consequence of Oliver’s title and connections trumped Hilton’s statement regarding the Lances’ availability. In recognition of his defeat, the butler heaved the smallest of sighs and deposited Oliver in the drawing room to await the young lady of the house.

An occasional crackle from the weak fire by the side of the room was the only sound filling the four walls of the room once Hilton left. Cognisant of the puddle gathering about his boots, Oliver took a half-step away from the Aubusson rug, his eyes roving about the contents of this familiar space with timid avarice.

Her drawing room had not changed a whit, not the furniture, the drapings, the little pastoral figurines of porcelain on the mantelpiece. He recognised the pianoforte from the resurging echoes of his previous visits: no Broadwood, robust and lusty, but of Viennese make, delicate in its yearnings under the hands of a gifted player. It had been a gift, if he recalled correctly, brought specially into England for the youngest Lance daughter on the occasion of the birthday that preceded her coming-out. He could see it now, the lazy afternoon six long years ago when Laurel had described the instrument - _state of art, given its six whole octaves_! His longtime friend and onetime fiancée fairly shook with excitement then, her bright eyes the lusty colour of dewed grass as she confided in him the wonderful surprise that she had helped select as her sister’s present.

This chamber had been witness to happier times, times he longed with every atom in his body to return to, were it not for the iniquitous history he bore upon his body as evidence to his degradation. He may have learned to better control the outward manifestations of his inner violence since Nyssa Al Ghul last saw him three years ago, but Oliver Queene was nonetheless still an interloper in the confines of this domiciliary space.

He rubbed the brim of his hat again. He could hear the tread of footsteps from the corridor outside, could not stop agony bleeding into in his mind now, as he hovered in that suspenseful state between hope and trepidation whilst he waited for the moment he had imagined many times over to materialise at last.

This visit had never been about Tommy’s request. It had always been about the realisation and the wasting of his sole remaining dream, even as he accepted the abominable hand that fate had given him, the burden of his father’s mission for him. It was about returning to Oliver Queene, the man, the lordling who was once affianced to the Diamond of the First Water in the Season of 1807.

Whilst aboard the _Amazo_ he had the temerity to conjure up a loving welcome from Laurel upon his escape. All through the abuse he suffered, he imagined her smiling face, full of relief when he returned to her at last, safe and whole. When he first arrived in Crimea he still believed that she would merely be put out by his colossal stupidity for never appreciating her before the siege on his father’s carriage, and that he could combat any frigidity in her reception with a demonstration of charm and contriteness of heart before his vision of her welcome came true.

And then he left Crimea for Portugal early in 1809, having heard the rumour that English troops were soon to engage with Napoleon’s armies there, on the off-chance that he could identify himself as the Duke of Starling and return to England at last. Even after he made the deal that resulted in his sojourn in Canary Court six carnage-filled months later, he had held tightly onto the image of her smile like an icon, trying desperately to prevent its replacement by another vision, this time of Laurel’s anger and contempt, which intensified with every death he caused.

His return to England after two more years of darkness and the events of the past few months had apparently changed little, his burning of her portrait upon his first sight of her aside. Theirs was an unfinished story that still required its tear-filled coda, an epilogue where he was denied absolution by the very symbol of his past, once and for all. As for her witnessing his violence in Bristol, the revelation that Tommy was in love with her all this while, the vitriol she had always hurled his way when they met – what were these but the amassing of more evidence that cruel fate would never release him, no matter how hard he had been struggling since the carriage fell in 1807?

He watched with rapt attention as the gilded door knob turned. He had been avoiding this ever since he returned to London, but it was time for his end.

The eldest daughter of Viscount Lance entered the drawing room, not garbed in an unsullied white like he had always imagined, but in a faded frock bearing what must once have been a riotously floral pattern of pinks and yellows when one looked closer.

He bowed. She greeted him and drew closer, her address familiar but not warm. There were shadows under her red-rimmed eyes that matched Oliver’s, a worn droop to her shoulders. Her cheeks lacked their rosy bloom, appearing wan and just a bit pinched.

As his courage withered somewhat under her expectant gaze, it occurred to him that she had not offered tea, which indicated his visit was unwelcome indeed.

“Ghastly weather today,” Oliver began, noting that the door had been left slightly open as was required by propriety, and Laurel’s lady’s maid loitered just outside as chaperone.

She nodded. She did not sit, nor did she invite him to do so.

“You have not redecorated since I last called.”

At that she shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “Do be so good as to disclose your true purpose in calling. Hilton indicated you bore a message for me from Tommy.”

“He bade me come to see how you were. I am acquainted with his reasons for not making the call himself.”

A pause. Laurel’s true thoughts had always been inscrutable to him, oft hidden behind a icy façade he had no idea how to thaw, and he could scarcely clutch at her consciousness now.

“Well then,” she finally said. “You have seen me; consider your obligation to him fulfilled.”

It was as clear dismissal; he caught the minute ripple of her frock’s fabric as her body twisted towards the open door. A wave of panic rose in his throat. He could not leave like this, not when he had come here purely so she could absolve him, or spurn him entirely. It was imperative he repeated his apology now, but he found that his mouth could not quite form the words.

“I was hoping we could speak,” Oliver blurted. She remained still, facing away from him and showing little indication that she heard him. He opened his mouth to try again. “You must allow that we should discuss the occurrences that have transpired, least of all what just happened in Bristol.”

No response. He watched Laurel draw her shawl tighter about her, recognised it as a habit which she often resorted to when she was in the presence of polite company and unable to show annoyance by folding her arms across her chest. Her voice was coolly cordial when she replied.

“I am not of the opinion that there is a need to discuss anything more, Ollie. Sara has apprised me of the extent of your involvement in her escape five years ago. Suffice to say, I am in possession of every bit of knowledge I ever desired to hold.”

“Laurel, please,” beseeched Oliver. He spoke haltingly, in low tones so that only the two of them were privy to his truth. “Are you and I to be strangers, after all that has happened between us? I implore you to speak honestly with me – like you used to in our past. You know the reason I never once spoke of Sara’s presence in England: it was not my secret to share, and I believed it was best not to reopen old wounds. But that is not all. I never wanted you to know the violence you witnessed in the slums of Bristol, I…I am an altered man, Laurel. While I was gone…things happened to me, things that I cannot bring into this life that we were born into. No matter how much I wish we could return, to that moment in my ballroom five years ago. I would have chosen different. I would have gone to you, and we could have –”

“We can’t,” she interrupted sharply. Then, louder, so that her voice filled the drawing room, “We can never return.”

At last Laurel turned round to face him, her bright green eyes shining with a sheen of unshed tears.

“I hadn’t wanted to speak of this to you but you have pushed me beyond my limit. Do you think that it is easy for me to pretend you are nothing to me, a passing acquaintance, as it were, as I have done ever since we returned from Bristol? How I wish to move forward, but each time I encounter you my entire being shudders with shame from knowing that you were once everything to me, yet time and time again you chose another. As you do now.”

His heart leapt and sank all at once. He shook his head, forcing out what he believed they both needed to hear, “I have always loved you. I have loved you for half my life, Laurel – where do you think all that love has gone? Do you think my affections so paltry and poor that they cannot withstand the altering events of the past five years?”

“Yes,” she said with conviction. “Yes, I do. If you love me in truth, then you have only proved to me that your love is never enough. Call it love when you chose Sara over me for five whole years? My mother lies abed upstairs, even as we speak, unable to tell the difference between reality and the vagaries of her broken mind. Did you ever think to alleviate her suffering by telling me the truth? Or what of my pain – the mockery I faced because my fiancé ran off with my own sister on the night our engagement was to be publicly announced? Sara said you came back to England in 1809 – why didn’t you correct the record then? Or when you first returned this Season?

“You say it is because of what happened to you while you were supposedly dead, but I know you, Ollie. I know you like I know my own name – I know who you are in your bones, and that person – he always seeks to hide when he feels guilty. Whatever has happened to you in those five years, you haven’t changed at the core of you. The truth is that you never would have come today, but for Tommy’s request, but for your realisation that you cannot continue insulting what intelligence I have after what I saw with my own eyes in Bristol.”

“Laurel, I’m so, so sorry,” he whispered, again and again.

“You have never once dignified my opinion in any of your choices, and you have the nerve to walk into my house today and ask that I intimate to you my innermost thoughts and feelings. Have you never considered that because of all that has happened between us, I am still angry?

“Anger has been my constant companion, Ollie—where do you think it has gone after Bristol? No matter how tired I am, no matter how wretched I become, I have anger, and anger is ugly and painful, but it is safe, and it is all I know. I have been this way for so long, I am only learning how to be something else in the presence of others. But then I come into your presence, and all of that is gone, and I only have my old friend anger, to succour and fortify me, and my sole choice as to whom I would direct my ire towards.

“I, too, have not enough love to spare, not in light of everything that has happened. Can’t you see why I cannot smile and forgive you, and speak of truth? Can’t you see why I can only offer you casual indifference at best?”

Here she broke off, and raised a hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks. Her eyes glittered as she whispered, her voice so muted he barely heard her, “The scars of our past stretch like a net over the very bearings of my soul. I weary of it all.”

Oliver held her gaze throughout her tirade, a sense of finality clinging to his limbs like lead. There were ashes in his mouth, lining his throat, his lungs. He too, was tired. He was tired of hoping for more than the vengeance-filled existence his father had charged him with, for the fantasy that her love would absolve him from all the sins he had committed.

Laurel was right: love was not enough to save him, not when they had so much hanging between them damning his character in her eyes from the outset. Not when he harboured a monstrous brute capable of maiming and killing above that baseline she denigrated, which he did not expect, but saw as inevitable now.

Oliver removed the remaining card he had in his pocket, which bore a message contained in a single line. He had written it just before he left the Fencing Academy as a peace offering of sorts.

 _She would have considered this him choosing her for the first time_ , he thought with little humour, as he reviewed the slightly smudged lettering that read ‘Mrs Sara Raatko resides in London in the Turkish Ambassador’s apartments tonight.’ Pressing the sodden card in her hand, he found that he wanted to cry. His voice almost choked as he said his farewell to the woman that had once been his dream, the woman he had wanted to marry.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Lance, for taking so much of your time. This is the last you will hear from me on the matter.”

She did not read his message then, only nodded tersely, and left.

He did not stop her.

 

* * *

  

He could not help the thrum of excitement in his body all through his return from Bow Street. It was the prelude to his accomplishments, the verset to every achievement he had attained in his life thus far.

Finally Quentin had something to show for all his strivings on his family’s account, and there was joy in his heart as he alighted from his carriage. The rain had stopped sometime towards the end of his last meeting, and he did not mind the muddy puddles gathering about the pavement outside his house.

_What was rain and mud when by this time tomorrow evening he would have made London safer?_

He entered the marble-floored entrance hall of his home, barely remembering to clean the bottom of his boots on the boot scrape outside before stepping into the pristine space. Hilton came to greet him at the door, with news of supper.

“Is my daughter with my wife at present?” asked Quentin, ridding himself of his hat and gloves.

The butler replied in the affirmative.

“Then have my supper brought up to the viscountess’s room.”

“Very good, my lord.”

Assured that arrangements would be made as he desired, Quentin ascended the stairs in search of his daughter. The sound of Laurel’s clear voice could be faintly heard through the door of the viscountess’s bedchamber. Guilt and regret struck his consciousness then. He had been neglectful of them in person these past few days, at first because he could not believe how uncooperative Laurel was in the matter of Sara’s location, later because he contrived to be more resourceful and buried himself in the workings of Bow Street once more.

The door swung open to reveal his daughter seated by her mother’s bedside, reading aloud from a leatherbound tome. Soft candlelight illuminated the room, gracing the Wedgewood blue-on-yellow trefoil patterning on the walls. As he drew closer to his family he recognised the passage from which Laurel was reading – he bought this translation by Alexander Pope of the _Illiad_ as a present for his wife in the early days of their marriage, as a nod to her antiquarian interests.

How different was their current existence to the hopeful dreams of their youth! Gone was the daring bluestocking he had married, whose greatest dream was once to witness an excavation of the ancient world. His shadow fell upon his wife’s bed and drew the women’s attention to his presence. Before he addressed his daughter, Quentin placed a hand on his wife’s forehead and stroked her curls with tenderness.

He had promised Dinah that he would shelter their daughters from the world and support her desire for adventure, but he had failed entirely on both fronts, until today. Today he bore good news for the safety of his family; today he made good on one of the promises to the woman he had married.

“Laurel, may I see you outside for a minute?” Quentin asked, turning to look at his daughter for the first time in days.

Laurel had grown thinner since he last talked to her. Her cheek was wan, her bones jutting out more than surely was healthy.

“Yes, father. Certainly. I had something to tell you too,” she said, closing the book and putting it away. His daughter seemed surprised, happy even, at his direct address of her. Quentin felt remorse again, as his thoughts wandered to his mistreatment of the daughter most like him over the past few days—no, years.

Careful contemplation had revealed to him the extent of his pride and folly in respect of his displeasure with Laurel. She had chosen to conceal news of Sara from him, yes, but was what she did so very different from the choice he would have made were he put in the same position? Quentin knew with a bone-deep certainty that if his youngest daughter – his baby daughter – were to ask him to keep a secret for the rest of his dogged existence, he would have done so. Laurel’s only crime against him was usurping his role as the provider for the family, but then again, was that not the very lesson he imparted to her whilst she grew up? _Take care of your younger sister_ , he had repeated all through her growing-up years, and then, when Laurel was older and spurned by society, _take care of your mother_.

Laurel had been the perfect daughter for so long that he had forgotten how to react when she acted slightly against his wishes, particularly when she never employed the mischievous charm Sara always peppered her inattentiveness with.

This faithful, dutiful, elder daughter of his seemed nervous as she waited for her father to join her in the corridor. Her right hand was fiddling with the edges of her shawl, and she had a card imprinted with blurred script in the other. Fearful that whatever news she bore would portend another outburst of his admittedly choleric disposition, Quentin bit his tongue and began with the harder of his two intended topics for this conversation.

“Laurel, I wish to apologise to you for my behaviour the past few days. I was neither fair nor fatherly in my maligning of your choices, and I am sorry if I caused you hurt.”

Laurel blinked with surprise. “Forgiven,” she said quickly, though her lips drew into a wistful smile as she did so. “We are family, after all,” she added more decisively.

“Very good.” Now that his apology was out of the way, he was not sure how she would react to the second of his news. “I…well. Would you like to tell me what it is you intended to share before I share with you what I’ve been working on in Bow Street? Like old times, with no grisly details censored for you to give me your opinion.”

His daughter fairly preened under the deference he gave to her in this conversation. _My God_ , thought Quentin, _what have I done?_ He had never once showered Laurel with tactile affection or gifts the way he did Dinah and Sara – Laurel was like him; she preferred the knowledge that trust was reposed in her or a single word of praise as a sign of love – but had he neglected her status as his child in treating her as an adult? What she showed before him now was almost enough to tempt him to ride to Merlyn House and beg the idiot Merlyn boy to come and worship at Laurel’s feet at once, except the Merlyn boy had clearly always thrived on the air Laurel breathed, and so, perhaps was not that much of an idiot after all.

“I have wonderful, wonderful news,” Laurel said, her smile turning soft and her eyes shining with innate pleasure. “I received word that Sara is coming to London this evening, and contrived to borrow a wheelchair so that we may bring mother to call upon her tomorrow. It will be a surprise, father, and I will not have broken my promise to Sara in doing so – we can be a family again.”

Quentin could not stop the grin that broke across his face, the shock of elation coursing through his veins. He clutched at Laurel’s hand like a parched drunkard catching sight of his favourite poison, “Can what you say be true? Is Sara back?”

“Yes, father,” Laurel nodded effusively, pressing the card into his hands. “At the Turkish Ambassador’s apartments. We must go first thing tomorrow morning before she catches wind that I have been made aware of her presence.”

He sobered just a little on account of the logistics of her plan. “Tomorrow… Laurel, we must set a specific time – I may be needed at Bow Street, or perhaps the Tower of London – more likely the Tower, come to think of it.”

Her brow furrowed with curiosity. “Is something the matter, father?”

His brilliant daughter knew that only high-profile criminals were kept at the Tower, the viscount’s eccentric hobby of being thoroughly involved in criminal investigations despite his status as a peer aside. Quentin could not stop the triumphant glee from seeping into his voice as he announced, “I’ve found the Hyde Park murderer, Laurel. That’s what has kept me busy over the past few days – we received word four days ago from our witness that she was willing to testify against him, but only today did we receive her full testimony. Our streets will be safer once we apprehend him tonight. You and Dinah will be safe, by God’s grace.”

“Father, it _is_ a relief that you have solved the mystery, to be sure, but whoever can the murderer be to warrant incarceration in the Tower of London as opposed to Newgate?”

Quentin checked to ensure that they could not be overheard. “Forgive me for being cautious about my intelligence, Laurel: this man is a most dangerous element – prone to brawls and the like of late – and I wouldn’t want to risk him bolting upon knowing that suspicions have fallen squarely upon him, and at the word of his woman, upon that.”

“The Hyde Park murderer is an aristocrat,” stated Laurel.

“Yes,” Quentin confirmed. He had spent many hours with men from the bar to confirm the extent to which privilege of peerage extended to protect an aristocrat who was capable of such a heinous felony, and then summoned the necessary forces required to perfect the plans being carried out as they spoke. Laurel cocked her head with impatience, a trait she had learnt from him, or perhaps inherited from him. This was the very reason why he was uncertain how she would take to the news: like him Laurel had the habit of loyalty when it came to old acquaintances, unless she was sufficiently convinced of the error of maintaining such a connection in the face of multiple betrayals.

If she had not been convinced before this, Quentin hoped she would be by his findings now.

“Listen to me, Laurel. You can’t tell anyone until we have him in custody, do you hear? It’s the Duke of Starling,” he finally said in a low voice. “I have a witness testifying that the Duke of Starling murdered all nine men on the night of May the Sixteenth, and his previous alibi a lie.”

Woe and consternation crossed her face, but he did not detect a trace of surprise in her features.

“Do you believe that Starling is capable of such violence?” he asked, as he always did when discussing a case with his astute daughter.

Laurel looked away. “I don’t know,” she said, pulling her hands out of his grasp. “I-I need to sit down. I won’t speak of it to anyone.”

He was not about to press the issue now when she appeared extremely uncomfortable with the idea of her erstwhile fiancé being a brutal murderer, but the curious urge of intuition within him told Quentin that she was lying, and Laurel knew.

Laurel knew if Oliver Queene, Duke of Starling, was a murderer.

 

* * *

  

John finally located Oliver in the hidden room behind _The Sacrifice of Isaac_ at about quarter past eight – a good eleven hours since he had begun searching for him in the morning. Seated on the floor, his coat strewn by him, the Duke of Starling stared emptily into the darkened space of his closet, his back against a leg of the sole table in the room. He did not stir as his valet entered the room.

“I saw Laurel today, John.”

Oliver’s toneless voice was bereft of emotion, as if a haze of helplessness had fallen over the man and he peered out of the world from behind its veil.

John remained near the door, unwilling to further intrude into Oliver’s privacy without being invited to do so. “Indeed,” he said non-committedly, cursing the timing of this visit – the eldest Miss Lance never had a good effect upon the duke. As always, compassion of a most acute nature seized John’s heart whenever he saw Oliver like this, insensible to all that was still good in the world.

Like Andy had been, just before he took his own life.

Encouraged by John’s response, Oliver continued.

“How foolish and conceited I was: to think that returning after all this while was a grand idea… My father gave me a mission, and to this date I know nothing of his murderer: Stellmoor continuously eludes me, and I have lost his papers.

“I went to see Laurel today, thinking that perhaps I can continue, that my status as interloper in this gilded world of ballrooms and fripperies be damned, if only I can repair some of the damage I once wreaked upon the lives of those whom I loved…”

At that a mirthless smile touched his lips.

“Love, indeed… She will never forgive me. She knows everything I touch is weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. And it is. Everything that I’ve done, everything that I’ve strived towards since the carriage first fell that night of June the Fifteenth, 1807—cursed, a chasing of the wind. And yet I cannot bring myself to end the travails of this sullied flesh; I have promised Hyperion himself I will survive and bring justice he could not effect in his own lifetime.”

 _Oliver was crying_ , John realised, though he could not quite see clearly the glistening of tears on the duke’s cheek. The only sources of light came from a slit above and the observation room behind him; little penetrated this confined closet where Oliver Queene had ensconced himself for an indeterminate amount of time.

John watched as the boy who had promised to avenge his father and struggled against all odds to be here right now turned to face him, all despondence and despair, as he said, “I would I could waste away, John, for their sakes. I would I could end it once and for all, if my life were mine. But it isn’t, isn’t it? I still have much to do, even if I only have failures to look forward to.”

Filled with panic, John laboured to effect composure, at least in his outward appearance. He had heard this before, of course, from a different man, but previous experience gave him little by way of advice as to what to do so he would not lose Oliver too. His only advantage here was that unlike Andy, Oliver and him were made of the same on the inside, and that meant that perhaps he could reach him just yet.

“I am here, Oliver,” he uttered in a low, soothing voice, as he would a fellow soldier who had lost his way in the thick of battle. “I am here to fight with you. You have not failed every single person just yet – even now there is someone who waits for you to continue fighting.”

As he had hoped, the mention of that someone caught the duke’s interest, and Oliver seemed to emerge from his lifeless spell.

“Who is it?”

“Felicity. Roy returned to Starling House an hour ago with news of Barry’s investigation – in Kent, if you can believe it - and Mrs Raisa informed me that she is in possession of some information concerning Felicity this morning. I’ve been trying to find you all day since she refuses to tell anyone else what she knows.” John judged it unnecessary to voice how annoyed he had been that Oliver rendered that search more difficult by veering most creatively from the schedule he had prepared for him all day. “Mrs Raisa is waiting in one of the private rooms downstairs right now – I brought her here after her grace and Lady Thea left for the theatre at half past seven.”

Oliver drew himself up to his full height, and rubbed a hand over his face before he righted his appearance as best as he could – it would seem that he had gotten drenched in the rain earlier that day. “What about Roy?”

“He says Mr Allen will come tomorrow morning with a full report and a proposed plan of action, but the gist of what they have found in Kent is that Leander Cooper Seldon may not be dead after all. I’ve allowed him to visit the kitchen downstairs first before he speaks of the investigation – the boy was famished when he arrived.”

In possession of most, if not all, of his faculties, the duke nodded. “Barry is likely to suggest we visit a list of solicitors involved in legal resurrections, if he didn’t already find the man in Kent. I suppose we can wait on that front – bring me to Mrs Raisa and let’s see what she has to say.”

 _Thank God_ , thought John with relief. Oliver had returned from the shadows of death, for now at least.

They travelled together down the shadowy corridors of Verdant, John expressing a silent prayer of gratitude with every strong stride that the duke took towards the little chamber he bade the housekeeper wait in.

The woman had grown progressively more anxious all day, and it was with difficulty that John persuaded her to leave Queene House for Verdant whilst the Duchess of Starling was getting ready for her evening – it was just as well that the delivery of groceries that afternoon had gone awry (the whole pig for tomorrow’s dinner party as ordered from the butcher was missing) and there was a legitimate story to be had for their venturing out in the evening. The housekeeper had nattered on about betrayals and going missing under her breath all through their journey here, which disturbed John strongly.

Mrs Raisa’s dark eyes were wild when she laid eyes on the duke, scrambling to her feet at once.

“Master Oliver!” she cried, before blanching at her incorrect address of him.

Oliver saw fit to give her a warm, albeit subdued smile. “I _have_ missed being called that. Sit down, Mrs Raisa, and tell me what it is you know about Miss Smoak.”

Instead of doing as told, she directed her timid gaze at John’s person.

“I trust Diggle with my life, Mrs Raisa. Be assured that you can share with me whatever it is you wished to in his presence.” He gestured that John should enter, and close the door behind him.

She began her tale before John soon joined them at the table, hovering a respectful distance behind Oliver. The duke was showing the older woman patience and understanding even as she was clearly on the verge of becoming distraught.

“I didn’t want to say anything, because I thought I must have been mistaken, of course – all I was told to do was to pack up Miss Smoak’s things and I thought nothing of it, since employees are dismissed very often without so much as a formal reason – Emerson would not approve – _at all_ – of my wanting to know things that weren’t told to me in the first place, except a housemaid then disappeared, with no notice at all, and I couldn’t help thinking, I could have prevented this, had I just been a little more curious…and then I saw Loring slip out of my room just yesterday, when she thought no one else was at home – she knows I know, and I fear it might be me next, all because I said nothing when it was Miss Smoak’s employment at stake…Oh, Master Oliver, how will you ever forgive me if you even choose to believe me?”

By the end of her speech the housekeeper was a blubbering mess; her words interspersed by hiccoughs and sobs. Oliver took hold of her hand and patted it, as one would a child, and gently urged her to take a few breaths to calm herself.

“Do you need a glass of water, Mrs Raisa?”

She shook her head. John wished he had the foresight to provide such a glass from the outset.

“Very well, if you could repeat yourself – and this time, start from the beginning. Who ordered you to pack Miss Smoak’s things up? And why?”

Out spilled a sordid and puzzling account then, of how she had been summoned out of her bed to the Queene drawing room late at night. All instructions were given to her just by the Constable landscape outside – she was not allowed to see whom it was that had called even though she rather thought there was at least one male voice in the room. She was told to pack up Miss Smoak’s things, all of them, and then return to her bed at once, and to never speak of the order to anyone. Groggy with sleep and obedient in nature, she obliged, but questions gnawed at all of the next day, particularly when she found traces of blood in the library. She did not clean the blood, instead pondering in her heart the wisdom of asking what had become of Miss Smoak, when that evening she learnt that a housemaid had been dismissed without prior notice begin given to Emerson or herself. Emerson was most put out by the decision, mentioning once that there was a sequence in which these things ought to be done, but Mrs Raisa felt a chill go down her spine.

Mesi, the housemaid that had been dismissed, always had an inquisitive nature that Mrs Raisa herself had once taken her to task for. She had been assigned to clean the duchess’s bedchamber on the very day she was dismissed, and Mrs Raisa vaguely remembered Loring leaving the house at midday that evening with a basket but returning emptyhanded.

All through the tale, Oliver said nothing, though he was diligent in giving the older woman the little nods of encouragement she needed to complete her damning indictment of his own mother.

“…I am very grateful for your courage in coming forward, Mrs Raisa,” the duke said in a steady voice. “I will look into it at once – pray do not worry that your position is threatened by your being honest about what you saw. I promise you I will do my best to find the truth out. Now, do you feel comfortable allowing Diggle to accompanying you back to Queene House, or would you prefer to stay here tonight?”

The housekeeper expressed _sotto voce_ that no, she felt quite all right going back to the house now that Master Oliver knew, for he had always been a good boy when he was growing up, and she trusted him to do what was right.

“Very well. Kindly wait here whilst Digg and I make the necessary arrangements.”

John followed the Duke of Starling out into the corridor, which was why he was privy to the moment where the duke’s kindly façade, assumed only for the benefit of wringing the truth from his old housekeeper, slipped away to reveal an uncontrollable rage seething beneath.

“Take Mrs Raisa home. Join me at the entrance of the Theatre Royal as soon as you are able.”

He did not wait for assent before he turned and made for the back where his Devil was stabled.

John ran after him, uncertain whether it was prudent to throw out a restraining hand when the duke was in such a dangerous mood. He could sense a lethal energy emanating off the thews of his back, which no doubt everyone else in Covent Garden would notice.

“Oliver, you can’t appear like this before the _ton_ – not in such a terrible mood, certainly not in what you’re wearing. It will cause talk, should the Duke of Starling storm into a performance he decided not to attend for the purpose of confronting his mother, and her grace is not likely to respond well.”

“Speak to me of clothes and manners after you heard what my mother did!” Oliver whirled round and caught John by his cravat, never mind that John had a whole inch on him in height. There was thunder in his hardened eyes as he glared at him. “Don’t you dare try to stop me tonight.”

As the duke released him, John let out the breath he had not known he was holding, except it was not enough, for he too was incensed, on Felicity’s behalf, at the news of the duchess’s betrayal. He felt for the familiar presence of his gun on his person, as he watched Oliver head upstairs instead of the stables, presumably heeding his advice about his attire.

Once he escorted Mrs Raisa back to Queene House, he sensed they had a hunt ahead of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! I have finals to study for so no updates until July. I am aware that this particular chapter was a rushed job (the second and third parts were written in a couple of hours though the planning and research took at least 2 months, but only because I am slow). The tonal shifts in the course of the chapter also owes to the fact that I took a whole fortnight to write the first half of the first part, during which I read Wuthering Heights, then ultimately resolved the conversation between Oliver and Laurel after binging Pride and Prejudice. Sorry.
> 
> The theme I selected was 'Realisation', i.e. the realisation of one's dreams/fears (ooh we're getting Freudian, aren't we?) as it is just realising things. It is personally meaningful for me in the first sense because I have been trying to work my way towards this point ever since Chapter 26 (I am just as tired as you are hahahaha). I hope you can see how the little pieces that are all the previous chapters fit together.
> 
> I love that Nyssa made a cameo in this chapter, and she's definitely appearing in a later chapter in her full fabulous glory. As you can see, I went full Gothic Romance in the first part of this, what with the extensive use of pathetic fallacy and all to complement Oliver's broodiness, though I definitely wanted some aspect of comedy of manners to be interspersed in there, hence the awkward small talk. I based the Lance House drawing room on the one in No 1 Royal Crescent, Bath, but I hope it was sufficiently detailed since I don't think I have a picture for you. I also took artistic license with the number of octaves that a pianoforte of its time would have - it's a little too early for 6 octaves if the pianoforte was obtained before 1812 but I thought five-and-a-half was a little too clumsy for a very long sentence as it was. The dress that Laurel wears is inspired by this one worn by Romola Garai in Emma: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b5/cd/54/b5cd549da1e237d1b3fa63ff95156cb6.jpg
> 
> This chapter is very much centred on Oliver's brokenness even though a lot of emotions are rampaging across the chapter - sorry if there is some whiplash at all that is going on. I sought to juxtapose him with all of the characters that make an appearance (well apart from Dinah and Nyssa.) The first part in particular went through many iterations before arriving at this, and I struggled with my portrayal of Dinah - I had wanted to subvert her madwoman in the attic archetype and there was a draft where she approaches Otranto levels of crazed in her white nightgown and River Song curls, but alas, we needed to ground this and remove excessive subplots, something you know I'm not very good at. Unfortunately one of the things that ended on the cutting table was Laurel's own point of view, which is why this chapter ended up so male dominated and focused, because I could get through 80% of what I wanted, which was all I needed, to without switching to her voice. This means that I will now have to defend her meanness to Oliver. I really hated writing that conversation between them. I never realised how much I did not care for fixing Oliver and Laurel until I had to write that conversation; like Laurel I just wanted to pretend the past did not bother her anymore and treat him as an acquaintance instead of letting all the raw and messy come out. (I bow my head in defeat, Arrow writers, it appears I cannot do better after all hahaha!) In any case, I understand Laurel's reaction as a choice about whom she will despise, which is why she is so quick to forgive Quentin later. It is about family - Oliver is not family, not after he supposedly betrayed her. I think she is to some extent justified in being angry about his never choosing her, which is love the action, but unfortunately Oliver is all about love the feeling in this conversation. She's still working through her emotional issues, and inasmuch as the plot requires her to be friends with Oliver, I couldn't in good honesty write such a Laurel. Until the Sara estrangement and the Tommy issue is resolved, I will not be able to bring her towards that point just because Oliver needs her to be there. Which sucks for Oliver, but I guess that's real life. Before you come at me with pitchforks because Oliver said he loves her, Oliver does think he loves Laurel - she's his dream, remember? - and the last chapter was intended to show what Laurel thinks of love. I think the Lauriver fans (if they are subjecting themselves to my obvious Merlance and Olicity bias for more than 30 chapters) will definitely be upset about my appropriation of the 'I know you in my bones' lines. Sorry not sorry. I did give Laurel one of my favourite lines thus far - 'The scars of our past stretch like a net over the very bearings of my soul'.


	34. Intelligence

“You look like the cat that got the cream,” murmured a male voice from behind her. Its intrusion was unwelcome and Moira concealed the start she made, hoping its owner would not sense the horripilation of the wisps of hair at her nape.

“Malcolm,” she managed, in a steady voice that betrayed little.

The earl came into her line of sight, a jaunty grin on his face. His fine clothes bore the faint earthiness of cheroot smoke and a tang of brandy, both of which he likely acquired in the smoking foyer whence men would typically retreat whilst women remained in the eyes of the public during the intermission period. Mentally counting the time left before the performance would resume, Moira began the obligatory exchange of pleasantries with little relish. She should not have allowed her daughter to leave with Lady Jessica Danforth and Miss Madison Danforth on a gossiping expedition, leaving her open to such confrontations in her solitude.

She watched as Malcolm Merlyn seated himself down on the sole unoccupied seat in the Queene box, despite the lack of any invitation to do so. He had been taking stock of her appearance, and drawing conclusions accordingly.

Moira straightened her back in a direct challenge to his prodding gaze. Earl Merlyn was not the only one who judged himself fit to comment on what she wore that evening; when she first arrived with Thea there had been a stir and gossips ceased for a second to properly catalogue what they were seeing: the Duchess of Starling positively dripping with diamonds. It was shocking, to say the least—had her grace forgotten that such vulgar opulence had fallen out of fashion since the turn of the century? Not that the duchess herself was vulgar of course, even the harshest of her grace’s critics would have conceded that the Duchess of Starling could never be less than regal, if a tad out of touch tonight with the sartorial rule that less was quite possibly more.

But the earl’s perusal yielded observations of a different kind. Malcom’s eyes glittered with recognition, and she knew he was aware of the provenance of each piece adorning her appearance.

“My, my, Moira. Mine eyes dazzle. What conquest did you have in mind? When I first saw you across the stalls I thought that poor Mr Steele had either cause to celebrate or weep, but now I can see that it was not a possibility you wished to court, but an existing triumph you’re announcing. Pray explain your display of Robert’s penchant for diamonds this evening. Don’t deny it – I was there when he selected that very string circling your neck. And the drop earrings for your successful delivery of the present duke.”

She let out a low chuckle. Ordinarily, the smug satisfaction he emanated as a matter of course was certain to draw her ire, but his observation was not erroneous and she was minded to be generous.

“How fanciful you are, earl…Can’t a woman wear gifts from her late husband without garnering censure?” She twirled her fan idly about in her right hand, allowing her diamond ring to catch the light. The three carats adorning her fourth finger had been an engagement present from her late husband, presented to her along with the customary Queene emerald on her left hand.

“Speaking as a bereaved spouse myself, I rather doubt the sincerity of your response.”

“Because a woman can never be virtuous in cleaving to the memory of her beloved?”

“Because of you who are, Moira. You and I: we are the same. There is nothing we would not do for love, but our displays would never be quite as blindingly obvious as…” Here he trailed off, raising a hand idly to gesture at her attire. “Perhaps you require a more specific question: was this display inspired by your visit to Mr Lacroix this afternoon whilst my daughter waited for you in shop on Grafton Street?”

It was frustrating how she found herself unsurprised at his knowledge of her secret comings and goings, at the confirmation of her suspicions that he was watching her every move. Dropping her fan to her side, Moira turned her head towards the curtains behind them, for fear that Thea would return and overhear.

“Did you come to gloat?”

“Not precisely, but since you’ve so kindly asked, I became aware this morning that you’ve been searching for Simon Lacroix for a while and apprehended him two days ago. Naturally, I also know that he was involved in a plot to frame the Duke of Starling for the Hyde Park murders, and that you’ve threatened the man with bodily harm unless he discloses the names of his partners. Which he has failed to provide thus far, much to your disappointment, though I imagine you were rather gratified to see Lacroix suffering this afternoon.”

Upon finishing his divulgence, Malcolm bared his teeth.

_A smile._

Moira forced herself to meet it. She had never assumed her actions would pass without detection, of course, when she first arranged for Lacroix’s abduction, but she could not help the flash of disappointment at the fact that she had far less time than she thought before Malcolm Merlyn would interfere with her plans again.

“Well then. You clearly have more than enough intelligence. What was the point of coming to ask me about my jewels then?”

“To tell you that you lack subtlety. Every piece you wear is meant as a taunt to a dead man, Moira, to the man that gifted you the diamonds as he did your title-”

“I _earned_ it,” she snapped. “I earned every advantage that I have, with everything that I had. And I am still dealing with the consequences of what I desired and took for myself. Do not sneer at me, Malcolm, and assume that I didn’t know how to use the very talents you said we have in common.”

Amusement was etched across his face. “Nevertheless. In this present moment you are saying that you have protected your son.”

“From his,” she hissed, allowing a long suppressed glare to reach her eyes.

Malcolm’s own blue eyes were knowing, if unsympathetic. It was old news to both of them that Simon Lacroix was Robert Queene’s bastard, born two years before Oliver and first in line for the dukedom then, had his French tart of a mother owned Robert in law as well as in heart. She watched the earl swallow, as he appeared to consider a line of conversation to take up.

“Have you made your mind as to the extent of Robert’s influence on the present duke then?”

She had. But if she answered that question in the affirmative, Malcolm Merlyn would no doubt caution her against protecting Oliver from Simon Lacroix’s machinations. He said they were the same, he and her, but Moira would not ever be as ready to relinquish hope where her children were involved.

“No,” said the Duchess of Starling. “I have not.”

“His recent behaviour…”

“He was rather put out at the loss of Miss Smoak. Hasn’t been able to keep his schedule in order ever since.”

Earl Merlyn did not believe her. The pale eyes or the polite smile indicated as such.

Changing the subject, he asked, “What do you plan to do with Lacroix?” She followed his line of sight to the stalls below. Spumes of white muslin were drifting towards their carmine seats, dourly attired beaus in tow. “When you are done, that is.”

Beyond a quick and ignominious death, Moira had little plans for the scurrilous villain that had plotted to frame her son and threaten all she had of worth ever since she first decided she would become the Duchess of Starling.

“What is it to you?” she asked Malcolm.

The earl shrugged. “He has skills. It would be a bit of a waste to forgo the exploitation of said skills just because he had the bad luck to be born on the wrong side of the blanket and then grew up to resent it, wouldn’t you say?”

As always he sounded eminently sensible, but Moira did not believe his inscrutable expression or his reasoning. “Perhaps _you_ require a more specific question: pray, what is your purpose in desiring my prisoner?”

His grin grew wider. But the sound of youthful gaiety prevented any further discussion on the matter, and Moira never thought the sight of her daughter more welcome then, as they turned to witness Lady Thea Queene enter the box, Lady Jessica and her daughter in tow.

Introductions were made and more pleasantries exchanged. The Danforths were in London for a fortnight—a rare occasion indeed, considering the amount of time they spent in Madras where Captain Abbott Danforth served, and one that was to be celebrated with a grand dinner held in their honour at Queene House the next evening. It was not long before the lights dimmed and the earl was forced to return to his seat, his intended interrogation foiled.

As the opening strains of _Idomeneo_ ’s third act filled the air, Moira traced the her necklace with the lacy tip of her fan, her mind drifting to the bare room she visited in secret whilst Thea was at the modiste’s that very afternoon.

She needed to know who Lacroix’s partners were.

It was unclear what exact role Lacroix played in the Hyde Park affair, beyond drawing the bow himself. Having met with the man today she rather doubted his ability to mastermind such a plot—which meant someone else wished for her son to hang and the Queene name disgraced. Someone else who was still at large.

“I don’t quite understand what is happening down there,” murmured Miss Danforth, as the actor playing Arbace began an aria.

“I do believe the high priest is singing about the inevitability of fate…Idomeneo cannot shy away from the rightful sacrifice required by Neptune…He has to give up his son,” replied Lady Jessica, nearly catching the look of extreme boredom on Thea’s face as she turned to the girls.

Stifling a smile at her daughter’s endearing inability to appreciate opera, Moira cast an inadvertent glance at one of the blonde heads seated below. Even without the recent threats to her family, Lord Chase was an excellent choice of a spouse for Lady Thea Queene. She was running out of time, what with Oliver’s five years away turning up strange men with wild tales, Oliver’s own public eccentricity of late, and the never-ending threat of potential embarrassment, at best, and ruin, at worst, that Robert had left her with.

It did not matter how large her dowry was, if the goal was to marry well. A woman had not the luxury of flirting with scandal in the world they lived in. Not before she married well, and even after she married there was an advantage in keeping her reputation like the driven snow.

Moira knew that when she desired Starling for herself. She knew it now, as she sought to protect Starling for her own.

It was the moment when Idomeneo prepared to kill Idamente, that she felt the presence of another person entering the Queene box from behind her. Moira tilted her head in the direction of the entrance, tightening her hold on her fan.

The present Duke of Starling stood by the entrance, a cruel severity to his eyes as he coolly regarded his mother.

She barely heard his “I need to speak to you at once, duchess”, or the cries of exclamation made by the other inhabitants in her box at his unexpected appearance. She did not remember the details of how she came to follow her son out whilst the opera was still running, what excuses she presented to her company in order to do so, or whether she managed at all to witness the moment on stage where Ilia offered to die in Idamente’s stead for love, a fantasy only fiction offered as salve for the brutalities of real world.

But she would later recall, with startling clarity, the ringing soundlessness of the empty vestibule they entered into, overlaid with the muffled strains of theatrical passion. She would recall the flicker of candlelight passing over her son’s livid glower in that terrible, pregnant pause where he said nothing but enveloped her in the silence of his disappointment and fury.

And then he spoke at last, simply, with certainty.

“I know,” said the little boy she had once cradled at her breast and laved with all her ambition and faith before he became the tool of Robert’s vengeance against her. “I know of what you have done, duchess. What is the name of the man whom you turned her over to?”

At once Moira’s mind became a torrid tangle of half-formed thoughts.

Every line of his face was clear indication that he was furious with her, that he intended to go after the blasted chit, unless she could convince him otherwise.

“Oliver, you have to listen to me,” she began. “You and Thea were at risk. I had to protect you, and allowing for Miss Smoak’s departure was the only way I could save—”

“What is his name?” demanded Oliver harshly.

“Oliver, please,” Moira said, reaching for his forearm. He brushed her off. “We are not safe, and this threat the least of our concerns. Your reputation was in danger, and unfortunately most of it your own doing. How you’ve been acting recently—anyone will believe a charge of madness if sufficiently trumped up, and he has specific details, Oliver, about your father, about your five years away… Can I not persuade you to have a care for your sister? Who will take as bride a woman with tainted blood in her family?”

“Duchess, you are trying my patience,” growled Oliver, taking a sharp step towards her as he did so.

He loomed over her on account of his height, and Moira held back an involuntary gasp that filled her throat as the fear of a hunted fox coursed down her spine.

There was a savagery to his manner she had never before seen in such close proximity, not once in any of her dealings with cruel men in the underworld. For the first time, Slade Wilson’s tale of madness seemed a knell for truth rather than a sinister exaggeration of Oliver’s eccentricity.

“I will ask you again, politely, and you will answer, or I will cause the scene you so desperately wish to avoid. What is the name of the man who bartered with you for Miss Smoak?”

She could not tear her eyes away from the wild ferocity of his gaze, as she considered his threat. Punctuating the tension was the faint sound of applause as Mozart’s _Idomeneo_ came to an end, giving the _ton_ bare minutes to witness their present spectacle.

_Thea could not afford the realisation of Oliver’s threat._

“Joseph Slade Wilson,” Moira breathed quickly. His expression only darkened with her invocation of the mercenary’s name, and she knew he was intent on crossing Mr Wilson for Miss Smoak’s sake. “Oliver, you can’t. Think of Thea—”

“I will,” he uttered in a low voice, just as her daughter and the Danforths filtered out into the corridor towards them. The rest of the _ton_ followed, Malcolm Merlyn amongst them, and a stir rippled through the collective chatter at the sight of what looked to be a confrontation between the eccentric Duke of Starling and his long-suffering mother.

Leaning forward as if to press his lips to her cheek, her son intoned into her ear, “You and I are done. But for Thea’s sake, I will maintain appearances in public.”

He straightened. There was a false smile on his lips, a coldly charming one she would have been proud of had she instructed him in the act of deception the way she had her daughter. Having acquired the information he came for, the Duke of Starling was quick to excuse himself and leave, much to the interest of the surrounding audience.

Moira felt somewhat shaken by the encounter. Smiling half-heartedly at whatever it was Lady Jessica was saying to her, she caught Malcolm’s eye and looked meaningfully in the direction of Lord Chase.

 _We have to act_ , she mouthed at the man whom she sometimes despised, sometimes depended dearly upon.

Malcolm nodded from the alcove where he had been watching everything with unconcealed interest.

 

* * *

 

 

Oliver could hear the thunder of his urgent heartbeat roaring over his hastily forming plans as he stepped into the foggy London night.

With three words he had proof that both his mother and the man that had saved his life and taught him how to protect himself were capable of lying directly to his face when questioned. He did not want just yet to think of what implications this had on his father’s murder.

Not when another person’s life was still on the line.

He could not tamper the worry he experienced for Felicity now that he had an inkling of her fate. He knew what Slade Wilson was capable of once his patience ran thin and his temper aroused, and five days had already passed with little word on the ground to confirm the existence of a Kingmaker code.

Oliver cast his gaze wildly about the street in front of him. Slade’s intent fixation on the procurement of such a code was puzzling, to say the least. It made little sense for a mercenary to involve himself in such matters, except Joseph Slade Wilson was never just a mercenary. He was also a businessman, and Oliver was beginning to wonder if his old friend had made a deal with a devil he could not cross, and Felicity caught in the crosshairs of that arrangement.

Two figures on horseback emerged from the blurry line of carriages forming outside the Theatre Royal. The moon shone high as a glimmering smirk of silver, lending its surrounding clouds only the barest luminescence, but Oliver had spent a year under Slade Wilson’s personal tutelage learning to hunt under the cover of a Crimean darkness, and his eyes identified the riders easily.

 _Digg and Roy_.

“Slade has her,” he said before they could dismount, more to Diggle than to his spymaster. He heard the doors behind him open as the _ton_ began to leave the opera for other pursuits of entertainment. “Roy, get Devil from the back now. John, I need you to…”

He trailed off. There was something not quite right about the row of carriages lining the street. One could barely make them out in the soupy fog, but their lack of ornament was advertised clearly as they creaked forward without once catching the light of the moon with a polished door knob, or gilded crest. These vehicles were all too drab, more hack than landau, for one, and there was no reason for their marshaling into a tighter formation around the Theatre Royal.

At the end of the street, a single carriage prominently bearing the crest of its owner joined the pack of hired vehicles.

It was the Lance family carriage, even though no one in the Lance family had reason to be in Covent Garden at this time of the evening.

John Diggle had narrowed his eyes with confusion at Oliver’s distraction. Turning to witness what caught the duke’s attention, he was in time to witness the moment when Mr Dean Winchester of Bow Street descended from the first hack with an army of twenty constables or so, and surrounded the Doric portico upon which the two of them were gathered.

“Your grace, I bear a warrant of arrest issued in your name for the foul murders of nine men in Hyde Park on May the Sixteenth,” announced Mr Winchester in a loud voice, producing a sheaf of papers to the gasp of the _ton_.

Oliver’s countenance took on the surprise he felt at the resurgence of the accusation.

“I didn’t do it,” he said, with a violent shake of his head. He did not have time for this. “Mr Winchester, you were present when my alibi was produced the morning after the murders. You and Lord Lance.”

Dean Winchester was, if anything, relentless in his carrying out of orders.s

“There is an eye witness who says otherwise, your grace. And evidence that will be examined before a court of law. Please, come with us quietly and your grace can plead as you please at the trial, or there will be extra charges of obstruction, and we will be forced to lay a hand on your person before the public.”

Oliver darted a look at Diggle then, who was wearing an expression of alarm that rather confirmed their shared assessment of the situation: Felicity was the only one who could vouch for him under the circumstances, and she was missing.

“Gentlemen,” said Oliver in an effort to stall, calculating the odds of fighting his way out of this without forgoing public opinion, as opposed to waiting for a trial whilst Felicity’s chances of escaping Slade with her life and limbs intact dwindled away.

The sound of a gunshot being fired and a sudden onslaught of a noxious screen of thick, grey smoke behind the line formed by the constables struck panic into the watching crowd and the horses tethered to the crush of carriages on the street. Alarmed screams and whinnies filled the air as more shots were fired, and man and horse alike began to charge off in wild directions in the ensuing pandemonium.

Through the cloud of smoke Diggle saw Mr Winchester lunge forward to prevent his suspect from escaping just as Oliver did, and the valet launched himself off his horse to drag the smaller man towards the ground. Unwilling to suffer the restraint, the Runner struggled hard against the thick arm around his head, emitting guttural cries for assistance from his fellow constables before the Duke of Starling bolted.

“Go! Save her!” shouted Diggle at Oliver, as they tumbled down the slippery stone steps of the portico towards the riotous mêlée below.

Hesitating for just a second, he leapt onto Diggle’s steed and did as told, even though the thought of leaving his partner behind galled him.

Oliver rode away, into the depraved heart of the rookeries, where even the most hardened Bow Street Runner would hesitate to follow.

 

It was not long before he had company.

Roy Harper he expected, given the lad’s past. A son of London’s streets required little effort to locate a foreign presence in St Giles, much less when Roy knew they had an urgent rescue to effect. It was the other two that he found fit to direct his foul mood at, their assistance in procuring his escape notwithstanding.

“You left my man behind,” Oliver all but growled at the two women entering the cramped, threadbare chamber he had prepared in the event of such emergencies. They were both garbed in black, practical riding habits, and the taller of the two carried a recurve bow and full quiver on her person.

“You’re very welcome,” replied Sara Lance, locking the door behind them with a gloved hand.

Nyssa Raatko, on the other hand, was less circumspect about Oliver’s lack of gratitude, and expressed so in very colourful Arabic.

“Wot she say?” asked Roy, peering suspiciously at the statuesque female and lapsing into a stronger Cockney as if it would prevent Sara and Nyssa from understanding him. “Who’re they?”

“To whom do I owe my rescue?” asked Oliver. “The Canary and Heir to the Demon, or Sara and Nyssa Raatko?”

“ _I_ owed you the rescue, Ollie,” answered Sara. “I’m afraid the whole rigmarole outside the Theatre Royal this evening is my fault.”

“Your father is responsible for this.”

“Partially, yes,” Sara nodded, and pursed her lips into an expression of vexation. “And one of my own. Nyssa told you I returned to London to track the whereabouts of a Bird of Prey. Helena Bertinelli abandoned the Birds during a delivery a couple of days ago. We have reason to believe she was in contact with a man going by Stellmoor before she left for London.”

“Bow Street spoke of evidence of my guilt. Am I to infer that Helena the one supplying said evidence?”

“Yes,” nodded Sara. “She knows of your psychotic episode in Bristol, Ollie. Much as I hate to say it, you’re faced with the choice of perjuring yourself and saying you are no killer, only to be proven a liar, or admitting to having killed at least five men since you last returned to English soil, if not the Hyde Park nine.”

Oliver considered this information grimly. Were he to leave London in search of Felicity now, there was a likelihood the public would convict him and that did not bode well for his sister’s chances in the _beau monde_ or his own in the eyes of the jury.

It was not the rightful judgment of death by hanging for murder he feared, but the premature end of his quest to find his father’s murderer. He was not allowed to die yet; he had given his word.

The other inhabitants of the room had seen fit to discuss the situation whilst he was lost in his thoughts.

“Why would they believe the word of an opera singer over that of a peer?” enquired Roy, evidently having decided that Sara and Nyssa were allies to collaborate with in forming solutions. “Much less a foreigner over one of their own?”

“They’re _English_ ,” said Nyssa, with a toss of her dark head. “Who knows why they do the things they do.”

The slight smile that crept onto Sara’s face was testament to the fact that love was blind and perhaps deficit in humour. “Because Ollie here hasn’t done a very good job in convincing the _ton_ to accept him with open arms. How many missed invitations can good _ton_ tolerate, or the lurid accounts that made their way into the scandal sheets? And because Viscount Lance is spearheading the investigations, and presumably throwing the weight of his reputation for justice behind them. Unless Helena is taken out of the equation, this is a very tricky situation to solve, even if you cooperated all the way, Ollie.”

“What if the witness disappears?” Roy offered. “That’s how we always used to get out of scrapes with the law; pretend to be witnesses and then disappear at the crucial moment.”

“I volunteer to kill the Greek bitch,” said Nyssa. “It would be an honour to dispatch a dissident for the Ottoman Empire, much less one that has lied to my beloved.”

“No, but thank you for the offer,” responded Oliver before Sara could gently tell her that a fresh murder of the key witness would not help avert the scandal presently falling upon Oliver’s family, especially given the fact that he was still very much a fugitive.

Roy’s blue eyes darted quickly with the workings of his mind. “What about Felicity? Say we get her back—she can testify in favour of his grace’s innocence.”

Sara shook her head. “It’ll be the word of an opera singer and the instinct of a very respected peer against Ollie and the daughter of a courtesan. With a long history of forgery, may I add.”

“Farce,” contributed Nyssa.

Unwilling to relinquish his point, the stable boy ventured another suggestion. “But what if his grace marries Felicity? Then it’ll be two peers against one.”

“That is a worse idea,” Nyssa said at once. “Poor Smoak would have to suffer _this_ for the rest of her days.”

“It wouldn’t work,” replied Sara. “Wives can’t testify against their husbands; it will look highly suspicious if Ollie suddenly marries the one woman that supposedly could absolve him.”

That was the main problem: the scandal. Oliver had to be proven entirely innocent, and while he was more than capable of perjury he could not singlehandedly explain away all the evidence given what Helena Bertinelli knew about him.

Oliver heaved a breath. He could not seek out Anatoli now; there would be Runners all over Covent Garden and St James’, much less Mayfair. If he remained in London, he would have to depend entirely on the kindness of Nyssa Raatko, which had the propensity of causing an international accident when it became apparent that the Turkish Ambassador’s company was helping to hide an English fugitive.

It appeared that there was only one person who could help him then.

The ensuing discussion of his fate had devolved into a private conversation between the women, conducted entirely in Arabic whilst his perplexed spymaster looked on with little comprehension.

Oliver listened for a few seconds, before giving up on applying his limited knowledge of Arabic to inform Roy of his decision.

“Roy, I need you to work with Barry on finding Leander Cooper Seldon while I look for Slade Wilson. Ask Barry to arrange for Digg’s bail and safety, should he be arrested for his role in my mysterious escape I am going to look for Slade and will send for you via mail at No. 23 Bond Street when I require your intelligence. In the meantime, make sure my family is safe and be careful.”

Nodding, Roy slipped away at once, melding into the fog to carry out his instructions.

“I’m doing it,” said Sara then, in English, to both Nyssa and Oliver. He felt his heart sink as he realised what she was about to offer. “Let me testify. You know that the obvious solution to your trial is for me to reveal myself. If I give a testimony in favour of your innocence, the resulting scandal would be large but at least salvageable. The word of a viscount’s daughter would have far more weight than any other witness you could raise.”

The finality in Nyssa’s dark eyes indicated that she accepted Sara’s decision. Oliver did not.

“No. Our parents would have you marry me for the trouble, after what happened five years ago,” he pointed out. “And your life with the Birds of Prey in Bristol and your freedom to be with the one you love forever lost.”

“We cross that bridge if necessary,” she said, raising a hand to his shoulder. “What sort of friend or hero would I be if I refuse to ensure the freedom of an innocent man?”

“The sort that has a greater calling,” he replied, taking her outstretched hand and placing it on Nyssa’s. “The sort that has people who love and depend upon her.”

He could tell that she wished to argue, but he no longer had the time to spare on discussing alternatives to his decision. “No, Sara. You have already done all you can, and I have already decided what I will do. Besides, you have a bigger problem upcoming: I’m afraid I informed Laurel of your presence in London this afternoon. She’ll come calling for you tomorrow.”

She flattened her lips at the news of his high-handedness. “Oliver and Laurel. Of course,” she said. “The duke’s son and the viscount’s daughter, always and forever.”

To hear the _ton_ ’s past championing of the match repeated to him right on the heels of Laurel’s complete rejection this afternoon rather stung, but Oliver did not begrudge Sara her ire.

“Sara, I would make it up to you somehow, but I’m going to have to go now if I wish to leave London tonight.”

She sighed, but moved away from the door to indicate her acquiescence to his will. “You may make use of any of the Birds’ resources whatever course of action you take.”

In a fluid motion, Nyssa Raatko tossed him a cylinder containing a sample of the smoke she had used to divert the constables earlier, and her own recurve bow and quiver. “You may also make use of any of our resources when you return to London, Al-Sahim. Simply give us the signal.”

Taking one final look at the women that aided him tonight, he expressed his gratitude and left in search of another woman that had always been more foe than friend.

 

The townhouse containing the nexus of British national security was relatively unguarded given its importance. Most directed their inquiring minds towards the owner of this house and the power he wielded, but missed the greater mystery that was the woman occupying its basement. Amanda Waller’s ascension to the inner circles of His Majesty’s government despite her race and gender was a well-kept secret that even her best agents could not grasp at.

Despite the lateness of the hour, she was neither dressed for bed nor surprised at the Duke of Starling’s intrusion into her rooms.

“I expected you an hour ago, duke,” said the woman, without looking at him. She closed the file she was in the midst of perusing to pour out a glass of claret, nevermind the fact that a man over six feet towered over her desk with a drawn bow and arrow aimed for her head. Raising her lashes toward the clock to their right, she finally addressed him with, “Now you’re left with just ten minutes before Bow Street’s buffoons come for you.”

Oliver controlled his temper. “I need the location of Slade Wilson and safe passage to that location.”

“No. Go to the trial, Starling. I have not interfered with the proceedings in the slightest, and I need you there.”

“Waller, we had a deal. Two years in Spain for you, and then my return to England with no interference from you as I investigate my father’s murder. I’ve said nothing about the fact that you sent one of your own agents to spy on me. I said nothing when it transpired that you kept information about my father from me. But this trial is going to bring scandal upon my family, and I know that the House of Lords would not have allowed for the charges to go forward without your implicit approval. You still owe me.”

“I owe you nothing,” she said. She took a drink from her glass, her countenance approaching contemplation as she savoured the rufescent liquid. “Two years ago I found a brutal murderer in Spain. He pleaded with me for passage back to England, to interfere in an affair that I had interests in, and I merely gave him the opportunity to learn some stealth before he began. Stealth you have not shown in your conduct ever since you returned to society. You have only managed to complicate things by engaging in useless plan after useless plan, be framed for murder, and turn the public’s opinion against you.

“As I said, I owe you nothing, Oliver. Go to the trial. If you are vindicated, your eccentricity will be a matter of public record and all suspicious activity perpetrated by you easily ignored for a while. If you are convicted, we both know you have blood on your hands anyway, and I cut my losses and prevent exposure of my involvement. You know you should have died in Spain for what you did.”

Her invocation of his given name indicated the little consequence she gave to the fact that he was a peer.

“Devil take you, Amanda,” Oliver cursed, lowering his bow.

She raised a dark brow, taking a drink from her glass. “Is that the best you’ve got, duke?”

He renewed his glare at her. “I will expose you. On the stand. Criminals do not have the right of legal counsel; you can’t control what I say, and if you wish my family to burn for my sins, I am taking you down with me.

“But there is a life on the line, and I am prepared to bargain for it. Felicity Smoak. Let me go and save her, and I will dance to your tune.”

A wide smile of satisfaction reached her lips. “At the cost of giving up on your investigation of your father’s murder? Your family’s reputation?”

He said nothing. His father had taught him better than to betray the friends he made, and his mother was more than adept at salvaging the family from ruin given that Amanda Waller was adamant on making him answer for his past iniquities.

“Very well, duke. I’ll trade you time and a horse, if you deliver Miss Smoak to me once you rescue her from Slade Wilson’s clutches.”

“That is not on the table for discussion,” he growled, raising his bow again.

“You have no right to make decisions for Miss Smoak, my dear duke. I merely wish to make an offer for her talents, as well as the code Slade Wilson would have her write.”

“I know your offers, Waller, and she is better off without them,” Oliver said.

“That is for Miss Smoak to decide, though both of you would do well to note that I am very aware of her criminal record. Now, do you want the horse and Slade Wilson’s address or not?”

He did, and quarreling over the fact that he had absolutely no intention of allowing Felicity to tangle with Amanda Waller’s plans was not helping her in any way. “Where is Slade?”

“He’s leased out a farmhouse in St Albans, a short distance away from the town on the road towards London. You’ll be able to reach just after dawn, I think, if you leave now. The horse I’ve had readied for you is tethered to a post just behind the house.”

The Arrow left without a word of gratitude or goodbye.

Chuckling, Amanda Waller poured herself another drink and prepared to give the file she had been reading to the runners that were about to arrive, a lead for another criminal investigation they were being far too ineffectual about. In her more indulgent moments she rather thought herself fond of Oliver Queene, in her own way. He was nowhere near as effective as Lyla Michaels—no one was—but the steady erosion of his naiveté and his almost theatrical struggling against the weight of his self-induced burdens were very entertaining to observe over the short period of their acquaintance.

Of course, she had a reason for using him to solve Robert Queene’s murder. When she had acquired her current position, Sir George had been less than enthusiastic and she knew he kept files from her still. More worrying was the wealth of missing information on the agents that reported directly to His Majesty—when Robert Queene died, everything had been lost with him, secrets that even Sir George Yonge did not know.

She had always suspected the murder was an inside job, albeit rather carelessly effected given that Oliver Queene had gotten mixed up in the whole affair for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was only Oliver Queene, Duke of Starling that had the same sort of access to different echelons of society that his father had, and so she had sent John Diggle to assist him in searching for the murderer, naturally without telling the men her true intentions—it was essential that nothing be traced back to her, since Robert Queene’s murderer was still at large.

The murder trial of Oliver Queene, Fourteenth Duke of Starling was the perfect stage upon which to flush out the true culprit, and she had no intention for Oliver to swing from the hangman’s noose when it panned out.

At least, not until Amanda Waller had the intelligence she desired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wondered if the title of this chapter was a bit on the nose, but the only alternative I had in mind (Confrontation) was rather uninspired and so I stuck with 'Intelligence', since this chapter is primarily about the information that people hold. I've been working towards this chapter for a long while, and I intentionally withheld a lot of information in the past 5 chapters whilst leaving lots of ambiguous clues in the hopes that theories would be discussed about who the woman that betrayed Oliver was, etc, but I think you've all learnt from Chapter 27 that I like doing this and so have wisely withheld your theories from the comments. In any case, I hope you enjoyed the multiple reveals in this chapter, and the daring rescue we've all been waiting for is coming in the next chapter. I haven't written it at this point (this really will only come after my exams are over) but the theme of my plans for now is action galore.
> 
> For those who want to know why Madison Danforth's name remained unchanged, I thought it could be explained away by the common practice of giving your children your maiden name as a name. (Fitzwilliam Darcy, anyone?) Madison would have been a last name and then more likely to be given to a boy, but not entirely outside the bounds of realism if the Danforths went ahead with the practice. It is evident that Oliver is in a very big tangle and the discussion about the reliability of witnesses was partially inspired by the trial of Damian Darkh and the numerous brushes Oliver had with the law over the first three seasons. At the risk of bastardising a maxim, he who goes to court must do so with clean hands, and a lot of our dear characters do not have clean hands. As always, thank you for reading this and all mistakes in this chapter are mine. I appreciate your patience in sticking with me despite my tendency to put the slow in slow burn. Whatever happened in this chapter has ramifications on all the characters, and I can't wait to show you what happens next.


	35. Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: graphic depictions of violence. 
> 
> In light of the long hiatus here's a summary of what has happened: Previously, in The Dark Prodigal, Felicity was taken by force from Oliver's home and all of Team Arrow and Team Flash have been looking for her since. After deciding to ignore Tommy's declaration of love, Laurel also spurned Oliver's attempt to make peace for their past, indicating to him that he can never be forgiven for what has passed, since he hid Sara's secret from the Lances. Moira apprehended the archer known as Stellmoor and it transpires that he's Robert's illegitimate son, but she has been unable to deduce who he is working with. Then, just as Oliver learns that his mother turned Felicity over to Slade Wilson and that both Slade and Moira lied to his face about it, Quentin instigates a criminal investigation of the Duke of Starling for the Hyde Park murders, citing witness evidence and rallying the city's law enforcement against Oliver...

_He was prepared to die._

It had not escaped Oliver that he was caught between Scylla and Charybdis as he rode northward. Behind him was a tangle of justice driven by Viscount Lance’s personal vendetta against the present Duke of Starling, before him a series of lies perpetuated by his sworn brother-in-arms himself. He rode with little confidence and even less fear; no, the one thing that drove him was the knowledge that he could, perhaps, right one wrong before they came for him at last.

_He was prepared to die._

And so he did not shudder, and he did not scowl with frustration when he was apprehended on the road out of London. It was possible that Amanda Waller had lied in her promise of his unmolested departure from London, or perhaps Bow Street had temporarily escaped even her control. Waiting at the city limits for were a band of armed men, some bearing the insignia of the Lance viscountcy.

No warning was given – they fired at him, and his horse reared up at the sound of gunshots hurtling into the dirt about its hooves. As he felt the sting of a bullet lodge itself into his side, Oliver struggled to keep his seat, his mind working quickly as he calculated the number of arrows and time he could spare at this stage of his journey.

They advanced on him before he could react. Pressing a hand to his mount’s flank to calm the beast, Oliver brandished his bow towards the closest of his apprehenders, striking the man squarely on the nose and drawing blood. His horse regained its footing and Oliver took quick measure of his pursuers. There were five determined to capture him and two more were positioned near the back, rifles in hand and ready to fire. He could not fight without forfeiting his rescue mission, and so he drove his heels into his steed’s side and urged it forward.

At least half of Amanda’s promises rang true: the horse she loaned was swift. Gunpowder and blood stung his nostrils, but the rush of air against his cheek accompanied the sound of hooves dashing towards a sort of freedom, albeit with gunshots following closely behind, and calls for the Duke of Starling to surrender.

Oliver reached towards his quiver and nocked two arrows to his bow.

He had been trapped in a mire of fatalism all day, but as always, the brush of fletching under his fingers emptied his mind of all promises broken and immanent, and he saw only his targets. Leaning back as far as he could, the Arrow aimed at his pursuers and let his arrows fly in quick succession.

The first met its target – the shoulder of the faster rider amongst them – and, as Oliver calculated, knocked the man clean off the horse from the combination of force, pain and surprise. The second hit the ground right where the second rider’s mount was about to tread, and that threw both horses into a great confusion that blocked the road for those following behind. In striving to avoid trampling their companion to death or colliding into their other companion, his pursuers were stalled, and the fugitive Duke of Starling rode swiftly into the quickly receding darkness of nightfall, his cover as an eccentric but mostly harmless duke blown and his only one possible mission left to him.

_He was prepared to die._

 

* * *

 

 

Her blindfold was unceremoniously ripped away.

The glare from a naked flame thrust into her line of sight blinded her momentarily, before Felicity registered the dim outline of a hulking figure bending over her. The figure shifted; she felt the sting of a cold blade graze her arm as the cords round her wrists were sliced off and sensation rushed past her hitherto constricted flesh into the tips of her fingers.

 _Here they were again_.

This time she had not the wherewithal to struggle, not even to utter the vow she renewed whenever Slade Wilson saw fit to repeat this conversation. Her seeming indifference stemmed from causes most natural: spirited defiance was easy when one had four days' worth of food in her stomach and the comfort of a warm bed despite the state of captivity. When Slade first came to commandeer her will, it had only taken the combination of her inborn courage and acquired wisdom to pronounce “Never would Felicity Smoak be Slade Wilson’s marionette on strings; his desires were destined for frustration.”

Heaven knew her body showed little of that fire now, not after she had been strapped to a chair in a cold, dark closet of a chamber, with only her own fear as company. Of course, fear could ebb, and in its place a knell-like pronouncement of her certain death would be produced by her relentlessly logical mind.

Upbringing under Donna Smoak aside, Felicity was a Bird of Prey and in possession of a keen aptitude for calculating probabilities. She knew precisely how many women escaped encounters such as this, and her odds of escape grew worse each time Slade ordered her blindfold removed.

Another woman might have folded by now, particularly since lying and presenting to him a false start was not an option: he was no fool, she was a terrible liar, and it was not as if they had not already gone down that route all through April, culminating in the fire she stoked in the heart of his Doll’s House in Cambridgeshire.

Since she would not – could not – do as he wished, she could only wait, either for the opportunity to grasp her liberty or for him to end her tribulations.

A receptacle of some sorts was pressed into her nerveless fingers. She struggled to grasp it, and the cup slipped. It was caught before its contents could spill onto the ground and raised to her mouth, whereupon a warm liquid touched her chapped lips. and she began to drink greedily as she recognised the mellow, sweetened scent of heated milk.

Before she could finish the contents of the cup, it was dashed away from her lips. With sustenance came a presence of mind that had been eluding her, and Felicity directed her attention to her captors and the exchange of words sure to follow.

Her bonds had been loosened by Slade’s henchman, the very same Cyrus Gold that had guarded her day and night for the first part of her captivity. Standing few feet away, at the doorway of her new cell, was his master.

Shadows raked over his form such that only half of his face was perfectly visible in the candlelight, but Felicity could discern the crisp, pressed lines of new clothing adorning his form, the dewy whiteness of the fine cravat about his neck. These details were a strong suggestion as to the length of her captivity. Her eyes drifted to his face. Slade’s expression was severe: there were deep grooves etched above his brow and the sides of his mouth, worn-lines accentuated by the impatience and fury seething under his typically controlled demeanour. He had been almost desperate in their last dealings, and her curiosity as to what it was that possessed him to seek her services now went far beyond the ordinary bounds of tactically important information. As always his sole eye gleamed with the intensity of his emotional state; Felicity sensed that this encounter would be more unpleasant than the last.

“It’s been more than a day that I’ve had you imprisoned here, Felicity.” As he conformed her observation, a barely contained menace permeated every turn of phrase that left his lips. “Have you had enough? Will you be sensible and take up your pen?”

 _Never_.

The echo of the oath that she had made long before Slade Wilson had gotten wind of her abilities, repeated to him over these past twenty-four hours, lingered upon the cracked veneer of her lips and the back of her parched throat. She swallowed and endeavoured to answer again, her voice almost a rasp after the deprivation he put her through.

“Never.”

In response, Slade wordlessly poured out the remnants of the cup from which she had drunk. Rivulets of the milk gathered in a puddle at her feet. He looked up at her, sole eye gleaming with spite.

“I had thought to offer this as inducement, but it would appear you prefer cruelty.”

Unwilling to show her fear, Felicity forced out a laugh. “Speak you of cruelty when what you call ‘inducements’ are merely an undoing of the wrongful deprivations you have perpetrated to begin with?”

There was an almost imperceptible twitch of the vein above his eye, and then Slade struck her with a single, vicious blow. Felicity found herself sprawled across the ground, a burning sting in her right cheek and arms and the bitter taste of blood in her mouth. The lower half of her body was bound still to the chair that imprisoned her, which she belatedly realised must have tipped over from the force he exerted. All around her the room spun; she barely gasped for air when she felt his fingers digging into her scalp and her head was jerked back.

“Aye, I speak of cruelty,” Slade snarled. “Did you think I would not hurt you? That my sparing you physical pain before this was a sign of weakness? I only need your mind and your writing hand, Felicity, which leaves us with the rest of your limbs as fair game.”

She began to struggle as she felt him reach for her left hand with his free hand, but Slade was faster and stronger than she was in her weakened state. He caught her smallest finger between his thumb and forefinger, and then she felt a sharp pain course down her entire arm.

She could not help it: she cried out, and he released her. Every impulse she felt fed the insuperable need to escape this man by any means possible, and she instinctively fled towards the nearest corner of her darkened cell, the weight of her chair still upon her back.

His eye watched her, observed the way her finger was hanging limply from the rest of her left hand and the way she lamely cradled to her heaving chest.

“I have never had a talent for torture, Felicity, though your reaction would suggest otherwise. Now, I repeat my request - that finger can be set at once, and we can all be on our merry way, or I can have Cyrus here break the hand to which it belongs. I should warn you that Cyrus is far stronger than I am; your arms and legs are probably mere twigs in his hands. Will you be reasonable then?”

Perhaps it was peversity, or a subterranean streak of recklessness to be drawn upon in such circumstances that compelled her to reply with, “Do you think that I have lived to be four and twenty without once betraying my very sense of self, because I have formed the habit of acquiescing to cruel men? You have threatened all I hold dear, and committed violence upon my person, but surely it is you who lack reason and understanding – is it not obvious by now that my mind will not be commandeered by tactics designed for intimidation?”

Her words were a spark to the tinder of his temper.

“You most unnatural woman,” he spat, rising to his feet. “You selfish, stubborn bitch. You have damned the only means of-” Here he broke off, and wiped his mouth, wild despair gleaming in the depths of his single, dark eye.

Slade turned to Cyrus Gold, but Felicity never experienced the combination of his spite and or agitation; the pronouncement of her next ordeal was interrupted by another of Slade’s men. In came rushing was a man she had never laid eyes upon before, a look of panic across his swarthy face.

“Deathstroke,” said the man. “This was found at the mill, and Murmur unconscious.”

A mask half-black, half-orange, with a bloodied black arrow protruding from its right eye.

“This shouldn’t be—we’re under attack,” growled Slade, snatching the mask only to toss it to the ground in frustration. “Anam, gather the others and clear out the files. Cyrus, ready the carriages and come back for Miss Smoak here – she is to be delivered to Mr Seldon, and you will wait with them for my further instructions.”

The slam of the door and its being locked punctuated the end of Slade’s orders. Felicity let out a breath, her gaze lingering on the closed door through which the men had just disappeared. Gingerly, she righted herself, twisting to lie on her side. It was unclear to her what was the cause of the men’s alarm; she only knew that they were distracted momentarily, that her hands were free and that her legs not yet broken. She knew the principles behind picking a lock, and she had hairpins in abundance to apply to that sole barrier between her and freedom. Fate had even supplied her with a sharp object, required to cut through the ropes that held her.

With her good hand, she reached for the arrowhead that lay two feet away from her.

 

* * *

 

 

It was daybreak by the time he reached St Albans. The previous skirmish had only earned him a flesh wound, but one that ideally needed to be attended to properly, all the same. Oliver had no such luxury. Allowing his horse to slow into a canter, he extricated the bullet and then pressed his cravat to the puncture wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

His hands were shaking ever so slightly when he applied a makeshift bandage to the area – the natural outcome of his many sleepless nights.

Oliver picked up his bow.

The shaking stopped. He could fight on.

Nudging his horse with his knees, he kept a punishing pace until the first buildings in the area of St Albans dotted the horizon. According to Amanda, Slade had leased a plot of land known as Grell’s Farm, situated between the main road and a stretch of the River Ver. It had once been an active mill, now rendered attractive by its location to smugglers and thieves alike, and repurposed accordingly. If Slade had taken over the farm, it was safe to assume he had a number of henchmen with him serving as guards, against which Oliver had to battle before reaching their leader.

With his bow in hand Oliver rode down the winding dirt road to Grell’s Farm, Eos’s pale fingers on his back.

The mill came into view first, followed by an adjoining farmhouse and stables just behind. Two dark-clad men prowled the grounds, sheathed swords by their sides. Two arrows were sacrificed to dispatch them, before the Arrow dismounted by the gate. One look into the open stables gave him a rough estimate of the number of hostile combatants on the premises, and then he entered the mill in search of someone to give him the information he desired.

As the highest point in the surrounding land, Slade would have positioned a sentinel in this building. Oliver detected slight movement abovehead and fired an arrow up the ladder that led to the second floor. His intuition was rewarded with a thud, and he went in search of his fallen prey.

Sure enough a lanky figure was sprawled across the wooden boards of the topmost floor of the mill, crawling as best as he could towards the opposite side of the room despite the arrow protruding from his collarbone.

If Michael Amar could have opened his mouth to greet Oliver, there was no doubt that alarm and abuse would have formed the basis of his response to the Arrow’s arrival. As it was, the crude stitching across his mouth quivered as the man known to the underworld as Murmur recognised Slade’s supposed brother-in-arms.

_There was no point interrogating a man with a stitched mouth for Felicity’s location._

Oliver reached for his next arrow as he saw the man raise the pistol at his side. It was a duelling pistol, though perhaps less elegant than those carried by the aristocracy, which meant that it had a fundamental flaw in its design: it depended all too heavily on accuracy before there was a fifteen second interval required for reloading. Murmur may have cocked his pistol but his hand was still shaking in an attempt to aim true when Oliver’s arrow flew into the barrel of the gun.

Murmur tossed the ineffective weapon in Oliver’s direction at once, which was deflected with the bow. When Oliver turned Murmur was on his feet and charging towards him, a knife in his remaining good hand.

It was not difficult to sidestep the blow. Catching Murmur by the back of his collar, Oliver sent him backwards into a nearby crate, then roughly twisted the man’s arm back.

A loud crack marked the breaking of the crate; a second crack Murmur’s arm. Bloodied and battered, Amar slumped to the ground. Releasing his opponent, Oliver felt his lips flatten with displeasure as he counted the number of arrows he had left. He needed every single one to confront Slade Wilson.

His primary aim in coming here was to retrieve Felicity, but there was no escaping the fact that Slade had lied to him about her, and therefore, possibly about his father’s murder as well. One of the orange and black masks worn by those loyal to Deathstroke lay on the table at which the sentinel on duty used. Before he could think better of it, Oliver extricated the arrow from Michael Amar’s body and drove it into the eyehole of the mask. If he had not located Felicity by the time this message was finally discovered, the presence of Nyssa al Ghul’s arrowhead on the land would trigger a defense strategy aimed at deterring a group of men rather than a single archer.

With one last touch to his wounded side – his coat was not yet soaked-though with his blood – Oliver stepped onto the roof of the adjourning farmhouse and swung into the first open window.

The topmost floor of the house was quiet. Treading lightly on the bare floorboards, Oliver inspected the set of rooms forming the attic in quick succession. These rooms were empty, bereft of even the most perfunctory of furnishings. Lowering his bow, Oliver frowned and paused in his search.

Empty storerooms raised the question of what game Slade was playing at, since he had been in Hertfordshire for some time after leaving London. Based on his memory of Deathstroke’s operations in the Crimea, Slade always travelled with cargo.

_Either Slade’s present purposes were entirely personal, or the cargo in question was not his usual fare._

He was about to leave for the first floor when he caught sight of a young man emerging from the mill through the window, bloodied mask in hand. Oliver bit back a curse. The announcement of his arrival was a matter of minutes.

Downwards he rushed. He barely had a hand on the handle of the next room’s door before he sensed the arrival of another person from the stairwell behind. Twisting round, he jerked backwards just as he saw the glint of something rapidly hurtling towards him.

The knife intended for his head lodged itself into the wooden door instead.

Oliver turned on his opponent at once. Possessed of a gangly, almost emaciated frame, his assailant wore a black and orange mask which obscuurd his features. Another knife was thrown, this time aimed at Oliver’s heart.

Deflecting the blade with his bow, Oliver struck the man’s windpipe with his other hand and shoved him backwards. A bannister separating the first floor from the ground floor was right behind them and the second knife had fallen over it, which meant that all of Slade’s men would be drawn by the sound. One blow to the man’s throat, another to his knee – each strike was designed to disarm as quickly as possible.

Oliver was barely done when another set of footsteps heralded the arrival of another assailant, this time armed with a pistol and a sword. The weapon was fired but Oliver had already lunged towards his new assailant’s feet. The man tried to turn his blade towards Oliver’s back, but one hand to his elbow rendered the stab harmless, and one smack of the bow to the back of his knees brought the man down to the ground.

His opponent let out a grunt as he landed heavily, dropping his pistol in the process. Stepping onto the man’s knife hand, Oliver turned to face his first assailant, who, having recovered, was charging towards him. Instinctively Oliver reached into his quiver and took aim.

He almost regretted the loss of another one of his arrows as he let it fly, but it met its target before the thought was fully formed and the man immobilised with an arrow to his collarbone.

A bullet whizzed past his ear, another grazed his shoulder and struck the wall to his right. Out of the corner of his eye Oliver saw two other henchmen aiming at him from the entrance hall below, both armed with rifles. One of the gunmen began charging up the stairs, whilst the other reloaded his weapon.

_He was wasting time being embroiled in this fight._

Firing an arrow at the man ascending the stairs, Oliver darted towards the remaining closed doors down the corridor and kicked them open.

Felicity was nowhere to be found.

A shower of bullets greeted him as he returned to the stairwell. Pressing himself into an alcove for cover, Oliver surveyed the scene. He had to go to the next floor, but the stairs would take too long and expose him to enemy fire. He heard the sound of gunfire easing, and stepped out.

A hand curled round his neck – the gunman who had ventured upstairs had drawn near instead of reloading his rifle. Oliver brought up his bow and struck the man on the chin at once. His assailant howled with pain, and Oliver took advantage of his distraction to remove the hand at his throat and twist it back.

Just below, the other gunman had finished loading his rifle and was in the midst of adjusting it to aim.

Forcing his opponent backwards at once, Oliver lifted him and leapt over the bannister with him in tow. They came crashing to the ground in the entrance hall, falling directly upon the gunman still standing below. Oliver had used both men to cushion his fall but he let out a grunt all the same, and pressed a hand to his side. His palm came away wet with blood.

_He had to hurry._

Gritting his teeth, Oliver got to his knees, then froze.

The sharp end of a long blade was positioned at his throat. Oliver did not move as its owner slowly came into view, a furious glint lighting his single eye.

“You’re a dead man, kid,” growled the man he once called brother.

 

* * *

 

 

She should have left the house the moment she escaped her cell.

Instead the same instinct that propelled her to answer Slade earlier brought her upstairs in search of his study. By luck or providence she found herself in a dim room richly decorated with oak panelling, furnished with a settee and a cluttered writing table.

Her heart in her throat, Felicity slipped into the room and crept towards the desk. Lying upon it was a half-written letter, addressed simply to an ‘M’. Despite the darkness she made out a line apologising for delay and expressing ‘willingness to deliver Felicity Smoak to any location so desired’.

Felicity tore her gaze from the letter. That was not what she was here for. Instead, next to the quill pen and a pistol, was a small wooden box secured with a lock that she recognised from her time in Slade’s Doll’s House.

A loud thud startled her and Felicity tucked the box under her arm at once. After a moment’s deliberation she exchanged the blunted arrowhead she still carried for the pistol. As she crossed the room to the window the sound of violence breaking out in the corridor outside only served to heighten her fear.

She looked out of the open window. It was too high for her to leap from without hurting herself – she had to go back down to the ground floor, or find rope of some sort before she could talk herself into even attempting to fling herself out of that window.

Gunfire – loud and sudden – coming from outside the room interrupted her train of thought, and she nearly dropped the box from the start she made. She heard footsteps and she half-stumbled, half-ran behind a folding screen just before the door was forced open.

Felicity hugged the box to her chest, unable to breathe. The pistol she clutched seemed unbearably heavy in her shaking hand at once, and she wished she had cocked it sometime in her panicked confusion earlier.

Seconds trickled past without her being discovered. Allowing herself to take just the smallest of breaths, Felicity peered through the slit in the screen and saw no one in the doorway. Male voices could be heard from below; she would have recognised Slade’s rasp from anywhere after her ordeal these past four and twenty hours, but the other husky tone was both familiar and innominate to her at once. Slowly, she cocked her pistol and forced herself to walk towards the bannister that separated this floor from that below.

The entrance hall was illuminated solely by a stretch of glass windows facing east, through which the first rays of dawning light streamed. She could see Slade standing tall and imposing with his back to her, sword stretched out against the throat of a man kneeling at his feet. At his side was Cyrus Gold, ever faithful, too with his back to where she stood.

As for the other man, she could not see his face. His position should have evinced defeat, of despair, but when he spoke again, she heard in his voice relief, almost as if his surrender was always to life and not to death. She drew nearer to the bannister, and for the first time since she was captured, dizzying exultation pierced even the constraints of her logical mind. There was a warmth suffusing her senses as she recognised that voice, recognised who it was that had come for her.

“You have me,” declared Oliver Queene, fourteenth Duke of Starling. “Now let Miss Smoak go, and I won’t even struggle.”

“That’s both generous and extraneous of you, kid,” sneered Slade, raising his blade. “But then, you’ve never been able to discern whether you were a mere pawn in a bigger game…”

She saw him bring his weapon down, and she could not help herself.

“No!” Felicity screamed, rushing towards the bannister and firing.

 

* * *

 

Blistering shock was all Oliver could feel as Slade was shot from behind, by the very woman he had thought to rescue from the premises. Slade, too, might have expressed similar sentiments, judging from the way his eye widened as it swept downwards to witness the growing patch of red in his chest.

Oliver did not wait to ascertain if their feelings were in accord on the matter.

Rising to his feet, he rammed his shoulder into Slade’s abdomen and charged forward. Deathstroke required a whole lot more than a slam to the ground to dispatch, but Oliver was merely buying time. Slade attempted a headlock at once, and Oliver responded by reaching upward and driving the heel of his palm down into the bullet wound.

Large hands ripped Oliver off and flung him against the wall. He fell to the stairs, pain racking through his whole body whilst he registered the extent of Cyrus Gold’s strength – Oliver had heard of the man but had yet to meet him in combat. He could not fight both Slade and Gold like this, not if he wanted to help Felicity escape.

_No time to lose then._

Struggling to gain purchase as he staggered up the steps, Oliver fired a couple of arrows in Gold’s direction. Felicity was watching everything unfold on the stairwell, the pistol she fired still in her hand. As Oliver neared, a bloodstained hand stretched out towards her, memories of a similar encounter with another woman flooded into his mind, forcing him to hesitate instead of calling for her to go with him at once.

Once, in another place, in another time, he had inspired terror by virtue of the blood on his hands, as he rightfully should.

Felicity dropped her weapon and took his hand.

“How are we leaving this place?” she asked, not a sliver of fear in her trusting eyes.

There were a million things he wanted to say to her then, but they were about to be pursued by two very angry mercenaries. Oliver tugged her towards the open window in the room behind.

“We’ll have to jump,” he said, freeing her hand, if only to retrieve an arrow from his quiver. At its end was a thin rope usually wound around the base of the quiver, which he had saved for this very purpose. He fired it into the window sill, and tugged twice, before slinging his bow onto his back and swinging one leg out of the window. “May I?”

Some degree of disbelief and reluctance crossed her features but Felicity flattened her mouth and gave a terse nod. Reaching down to wrap his arm securely around her waist and arrange her arm around his neck, he tried for gentle reassurance.

“It’ll be all right – just hold onto me tight.”

“I imagined you saying that under different circumstances,” came the mumbled reply, which took his attention away from gauging the distance from the window and the ground.

Oliver had only the time to dart her a look of incredulity before Cyrus Gold came rushing into the room after them, a roar of rage upon his lips.

They jumped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still with me after all this time, I thank you. Every kind word that you've said about this fic has been a word of encouragement as I struggled to push this chapter out. I've been drafting this since March. I don't think action scenes are my forte at all - I can imagine them easily but when it comes to writing? I kept deleting and rewriting and rewriting and there were times when I just wanted to give up, because I wanted very badly to give you something worth reading but I was not happy with anything I've written. As it is Chapter 35 doesn't meet with my full approval, but I honestly think (and hope) that a good many of you will have a blast reading it. If you think I could write better, then I apologise that the comeback didn't meet your expectations, and I will keep improving. Please understand that I wrote this in one of the most trying times of my life, and that I am very happy to keep working on this with you.
> 
> Chapter 35 was always going to be difficult for me, because I intended it to start an arc when all the seeds I laid down in the third arc are going to come together. There was a lot of planning and decisions made about what to put in and what to leave out in this instalment. I also wanted to insert a strong dose of Olicity, and it was a challenge imbuing the prose with the same descriptive richness you find in previous chapters, or wit, without sacrificing the tension I wished to evoke in you, the reader. In my many moments of doubt I opted for brevity - I didn't want to lose you in a bog of descriptive detail. I am, however, entirely relieved to be returning to snappy banter and legal jargon in the following chapters, and I hope you enjoyed my attempts at writing action.
> 
> Grell's Farm is a shout out to Mike Grell, of course, and just to clarify, Oliver's voice is a bit unrecognisable when he's talking to Slade because he was just choked. Osiris and Murmur both feature in this chapter as a further reference to the DC Comics-verse and Arrow respectively. Yes, I am aware the fighting gets a bit brutal but I tried for PG13 fight scenes as far as possible despite the fact that Batman's fight scenes in Batman v Superman were imprinted all over my mind. The other film inspiration I had when writing this was Star Wars: The Force Awakens - I was determined that Felicity would rescue herself, though my good friend austencello points out that the shooting of Slade Wilson parallels the cure scene in the Season Two finale. There are also hints of Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart in my insistent reference to Slade Wilson's eye, though obviously I can only dream of reaching Poe's linguistic mastery.
> 
> With Felicity rescued we will need to return to London to sort out all the mess - don't forget that Digg fought with the runners in the last chapter and Moira has a lot on her plate after her son fired two arrows at the runners in pursuit of him and left London. Tommy's going to be clamouring to clear his best friend's name, and we're going to find out more about what's in the box that Felicity snatched from Slade's study. I'm about to fly off to a different continent to begin a new short lease of life (those who know me from tumblr know that I just left England haha) but I'm really excited about writing as much as I can and I hope you'll be just as excited with me for the upcoming ride! xxx


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